For a while, "women's games" seemed to be a category that attracted a lot of attention. I was thinking, "Will this year be the year that women are going to explode into the game?" At that time, news of project shutdowns and layoffs came out one after another. This has been particularly evident since last year, when few vendors were able to seize the market opportunity recognized earlier.
Otome orientation and dress-up are not easy
1. Raised more than 100 million, did 4 years, and rushed to the shelf
In the female game that is in difficulty, "Box Court Dolls" should already be a relatively decent one.
Early games were special because of BJD's gameplay theme, and there were few competitors in the market. Originally, the game was finalized by Bilibili for agency publishing, but in January this year, game developer Qianyue Network said that the two sides stopped agency cooperation, and the game was transferred to Thrush Interactive Entertainment (a subsidiary of Qianyue Network) to operate independently.
Qianyue Network was founded in 2017 and began to develop "Box Court Dolls" the year after its establishment. At the beginning, the company was established with the investment of Qingrui Venture Capital, and in the next 2 years, the company carried out 3 financings, and the new shareholders included Bilibili, Huiquan Investment, Chuxin Capital, Shunwei Capital, and Asashi Venture Capital. In 2021, Qingrui Venture Capital revealed that Qianyue Network "completed Series B and A+ rounds of financing in a row".
In the early years, Qianyue Network also made 2 dating software and several mini games, although the early expenses were unknown, but after several financings, the company's money was still not enough to spend. The company claims to have fallen into a broken capital chain, and once some netizens who claimed to be employees of Thrush Interactive Entertainment said that the company had arrears of wages and illegal layoffs.
Shortly after announcing the termination of the distribution cooperation, "Box Court Dolls" was released online. Due to limited manpower, the game is currently only listed on App Treasure, TapTap and App Store, and it is expected to be listed on channels such as Station B later. And "Box Court Dolls" did not get a version number, and could only be listed for profit in the form of advertising monetization.
For company employees, projects that do not get paid are naturally not good projects; But for long-awaited players, this time is undoubtedly a game of conscience.
The luck of "Box Court Dolls" is finally a little better. With almost no publicity, "Box Court Dolls" once reached the 6th place on the iOS free list with the activity of inviting new users at the beginning of its launch. In the follow-up operation, the game was pointed out to have infringement, but even if the team had limited manpower, it was successfully resolved, and the infringed party and players also gave relatively positive feedback.
In the long run, the test of the game still falls to the profit level.
Weibo related to infringement
2. It cannot continue the operation, and it is a good plan to stop and not stop serving
Players have invested a lot of emotional sustenance into the game, and the data loss caused by the suspension is the last thing players want to accept. Therefore, "stop and don't stop" has become another way out after the game is poorly managed.
Huaqing's flying national style otome announced the suspension of the game "The Boss is Too Busy" in early February. After only 3 days, the game said that it would suspend the server suspension plan, retain the game server, game data and related communities, but the game would stop content updates, new player registration, and recharge. In other words, "Too Busy" survived for the time being.
"Too Busy" replicates the practice of "Yunchang Yue", which announced the suspension of operation at the same time period last year.
The dress-up game "Yunchang Yue" was developed by Xishanju and published by Tencent, and last year the game announced that it planned to stop the operation of "Yunchang Yue" due to the expiration of the contract between the two parties. Players who learned the news successively went to the Weibo of the China Consumers Association to leave messages, and the Consumer Association responded that it would pay attention to related issues, and the game finally announced that it would continue to operate in a non-stop manner.
In March last year, "Yunchang Yuyi" said that the package body still needs to be optimized, and it will take time for various channels to resume shelf. As of now, the major channels have not yet launched the package, and players need to find another way to enter the game. "Too Busy" has also been removed from the App Store, Huawei App Store and other channels, but it can still be downloaded on Meizu and 360 mobile assistants.
When the game decides to shut down and prepares to close the paid entrance, it will take a while to resume the service. The Legend of the Civet is an example of a happy collaboration between the two parties, originally released by Light Year, which was revealed last August that it was in a state of continuous loss and planned to be discontinued soon.
Less than a month later, "The Legend of Lingmao" announced that it would be independently operated by the developer You Mengchuxin. The game was removed from the App Store for about four months, and was used to bind a new anti-addiction system and access payment functions. The data migration was completed within half a year, and the game resumed operation in the form of in-app purchases, but before and after the removal, the game was still unknown on the iOS best-selling list.
So far, the players of "The Legend of the Spirit Cat" have obtained a fairly acceptable ending. As for why "Yunchang Yuyi" failed to try such a negotiation, perhaps part of the reason is that the version number of "Yunchang Yuyi" is not in Xishanju's own hands, and it is inevitably difficult to hand it over.
3. From female to two-dimensional, the result is still a pit
The expiration of the cooperative agent, the transfer of operation rights, and the gradual suspension of the game at the end of the game have all been experienced in "Natsume's Beautiful Diary". The game is developed by Sugar Games and published by Hero Games in 2015. The cooperation between the two parties after three and a half years of operation expired, and the game operation right returned to the hands of Sugar Games. The iOS version of the national server was only removed from the shelves in February last year, and the WeChat mini game version began to be operated instead.
In fact, before the end of the cooperation with Hero Games, Fan Sugar Games no longer plunged headlong into the female track. In 2017, the two-dimensional "Food Contract" developed by the company was launched, and the iOS best-selling list fluctuated greatly, but until 2020, it can still rank more than 100 from time to time.
This gave the game the confidence to move into the two-dimensional track. In 2019, the company registered the soft books of the sequels to "Food Contract" and "Natsume's Beautiful Diary", which are represented by two product lines.
In 2020, Sugar Games registered the soft book of "Cat City", and the company received investment from Tencent early the following year. Last year, "Cat City" was launched, and after a month, it gradually fell out of the top 20 of the iOS best-selling list. There is no new news about the "Natsume's Beautiful Diary 3 Girl Notice" that registered on Weibo, and it is doubtful whether there are any plans to make a female game.
Moreover, the company may have other intentions. In the middle of last year, the founder of the company newly established Shanghai Luca Bear Technology Co., Ltd., the main body of the company. Soon after, all shareholders of Fan Sugar Game pledged their shares to Shanghai Luca Bear Technology, and Li Nachuan, head of the business department of Tencent Interactive Entertainment, withdrew from the board of directors of Fan Sugar Games.
4. Although there is no discontinuation of the news, but...
The Spiral Waltz is still operating at a loss.
"Spiral Waltz" is a game developed by Cross Star Studios, published by Sky Ladder Network, and launched in 2018. In November last year, the game said that due to long-term losses, it will adjust its operation ideas in the future, and release 2~3 sets of costumes in the form of active, diamond-consuming and small payments every month, while maintaining the update of the main story.
According to the original operation plan of "Spiral Waltz", the game originally planned to achieve profit with small profits and high sales, that is, the idea of a large DAU. As a result, the number of users of the game did not meet expectations, and the game has not entered the top 100 of the iOS best-selling list since its launch, and the loss is not surprising.
The game explicitly denied the plans for the suit, but the players' unease was not subsided by the official explanation. Some players have doubts about the company's investment in "Spiral Waltz 2 - Rose War" and adjust the operation plan of "Spiral Waltz" at the same time, believing that there is no current plan to stop the service because "Spiral Waltz 2" has not yet been officially launched and is unwilling to give up the only products at present.
"Spiral Waltz 2 - Rose War" received a version number last December, and the negative emotions of players have not yet calmed down. After all, if the company has no other products to win on, players also understand that losing money will not last long.
In addition, in fact, the operation of the game is seen by players, and under the Weibo of some games, you can even see something like "Live!" of encouraged comments.
For example, Xinghui Games' dress-up game "Girl's Throne" was launched in April 2021, and the latest version update of the game stayed in July of the same year; "Bright Star" developed by Changyou and published by Tencent was launched in China in January 2022, and the latest version was updated in August of the same year.
Within three months of the launch of these two games in China, the iOS free list fell from TOP30 to 1,000, and the best-selling list ranking also declined month by month. Although the two games are still in operation, they have not released an official announcement on TapTap for at least half a year, which is equivalent to a semi-suspended state in the eyes of some players.
"The Girl's Throne" Weibo comment
5. All have to be IP, but the game is not yet online and there is no money
The Apegee Network was also in the spotlight as a startup. Founder Liu Zijian, who served as head of papergames publishing, received investment from Mihayou, Tencent and Atompunk less than a year after its founding. Its women's game "The Last Label" adopted the uncommon theme of rap.
After two years of planning, at the end of last year, "The Last Label" announced that it would "bid farewell to most of the friends who came to our studio", and game development was forced to slow down due to financial difficulties and other factors.
For some women-oriented games, creating characters is an indispensable part of game operation, which is indispensable for pre-planning. In this regard, "The Last Label" wants to do quite a lot.
According to official statistics, 29 songs, 12 radio dramas and 107 videos have been launched in the past two years, and even the birthday plans of 12 male protagonists, related physical CDs and peripherals, and the production team has hardly been left behind. After the planning was suspended, the official Taobao store was handed over to a third-party agent, and the final cooperation was the themed restaurant opened in Guangzhou earlier this year.
Some otome games have taken a lot of effort to create content around 4~5 characters. Even with industry experience and endorsement by major manufacturers, it seems that a start-up team has a slight difficulty creating content for 12 characters at the same time.
Women also have to do long-term operations
In recent years, the so-called women-oriented games have long been not limited to otome love, or dress-up cultivation gameplay, and the themes are more abundant and diverse. For example, "Absolute Interpretation" and "Bright Starway" tried the theme of the entertainment industry, and "Black Cat Gonzo Society" tends to urban mystery and so on.
But innovation is innovation, and the real special fight is still mainly otome products. And it's not simple to do a good job of otome products, among the four major otome games, two of them took a while to precipitate players to have today's results.
According to QuestMobile's report, "Undecided Event Book" and "Light and Night Love" were both selected as the top 20 mobile game dark horse lists in 2022, and as new products launched not this year, DAU compound growth rates reached 9.8% and 8.8% respectively.
"Love of Light and Night" was launched in mid-2021 and stabilized between more than 30~200 iOS best-selling lists after a boom. On the contrary, after half a year of operation, the game has entered the iOS best-selling list TOP100 more frequently, and has returned to the best-selling TOP10 at event nodes such as anniversary celebrations and Qixi Festival.
The accumulation of game users is almost always based on content updates. The game's ranking on the iOS free list has gradually recovered to the TOP200 since the end of 2021, and according to DataEye, the game has only had a relatively large number of purchases in the early days of launch.
"Undecided Event Book" was launched in mid-2020, and after 2 years of operation, it remained in the iOS best-selling TOP200 more frequently. This period is also the time when the iOS free list ranking rises, starting from nearly 1,000 to the TOP400 and maintaining it so far, but there is also a blessing in the purchase volume.
"Love and Producer" and "Painted Traveler in Time and Space" have not seen an operational recovery, but the importance of content updates can still be seen from "Love and Producer". "Love and Producer" has been online for more than five years, and in the past year, after every game update event, it has returned to the TOP50 position on the iOS best-selling list without exception, which is enough to see the stickiness of users.
epilogue
Looking back at last year, there are indeed few explosive new products on the women's track. In the future, there are also big manufacturers such as Sanqi Interactive Entertainment and Lingxi Interactive Entertainment that are preparing to try women's tracks, and Papergames is expanding to the open world. Whether women can tap into new market opportunities in games may be difficult to conclude in a short period of time.