WeChat mini games have developed rapidly in recent years and have become one of the important growth points of the domestic game industry, among which the growth rate of products based on hybrid monetization mode is amazing.
Judging from the recent product performance, Sanqi's hybrid mini game product "Seeking Dao" is more eye-catching in terms of launch performance and best-selling list; Several hybrid products under the head mini-game manufacturer Haoteng, such as "Mad Knights" and "King of Salted Fish", have always had stable market performance.
DataEye Research Institute believes that hybrid monetization model mini games are rising rapidly and may have become a new growth point on the track. And from the perspective of multiple popular products on the market, this model is largely replicable.
What is the current situation with the Hybrid Monetization Mini Game?
DataEye Research Institute disassembles from multiple dimensions such as current situation, difficulty and future, hoping to help the industry.
First, the current situation of the mixed mini-game
(1) The current situation of mixed mini game market data
At the 2023 Game Advertising Ecology Conference, Tencent Advertising disclosed the relevant hybrid mini game data from two dimensions.
1. Market dimension: Hybrid mini games are growing rapidly
From the perspective of consumption, the purchase volume has doubled. In 2023, the number of products and consumption of mixed mini games will continue to increase every month, and the purchase volume in Q2 will double compared with Q1. On the one hand, more and more developers are joining the hybrid transformation track, and the buying market is becoming more and more active; On the other hand, the advantage of low-cost purchase volume of mini games is maintained in the hybrid track, which provides more operating space for mixed change mini games, and the purchase investment can be further improved.
From the perspective of product flow, the turnover increased by 200% in one and a half years. Since Q1 2022, the turnover of hybrid mini game products has increased steadily, and as of June 2023, the turnover of related hybrid mini game products has increased by 200%. The WeChat mini game track has developed rapidly in the past few years, and the business model of in-app purchase/monetization has been very mature, while for hybrid mini game products, the revenue dimension is more diversified, and the turnover ceiling may be higher.
From the user level, the user scale of hybrid mini game products continues to grow. The number of WeChat Mini Game users has exceeded 1 billion, and user habits have gradually developed. Hybrid products attract both paying users and advertising users, reaching a larger range of users, and the corresponding user scale growth is more obvious.
2. Product dimension: traditional categories continue to grow, and there is a lot of room for the development of new theme gameplay
From the perspective of the scale of product purchases, the mixed change mini game has become a "one super many strong" situation. "One super" refers to the "open box" gameplay, which currently ranks first in the purchase volume of mixed products with a proportion of 41%. Traditional gameplay such as character cards, tower defense and synthesis accounted for 14%, 13% and 9% respectively, forming a "how strong" situation.
From the perspective of product growth rate, traditional high-quality categories have grown steadily. In addition to the "box opening" gameplay, simulation management, tower defense and card placement and other traditional categories have become the top 3 categories of growth, of which the simulation business category that integrates synthesis and management increased by 144%, while tower defense and placement increased by 85% and 44% respectively. In other words, new gameplay can quickly gain popularity and popularity in the market, but the traditional gameplay category is more solid and stable.
From the perspective of product development trends, there are greater opportunities for new themes and new gameplay. Hybrid mini-games are in a stage of rapid rise, so some innovative products that make players refreshing have a greater chance of breaking through. The data shows that the purchase volume of emerging gameplay accounts for more than 40%, and the daily consumption of many products exceeds 1 million, which means that more and more developers in the market are trying to break through through innovative products, and the investment continues to increase.
From the data observation, the current development momentum of hybrid mini games is relatively strong, and it is still suitable for developers to enter the track. In terms of products, emerging gameplay has more opportunities to break through in the rapidly rising hybrid transformation track, but the stability of traditional products will still be the direction of many developers' research.
(2) The development process and thinking of mixed change mini games
DataEye Research believes that the rise of hybrid minigames is not accidental. At present, WeChat Mini Games can be divided into three stages in the product development stage:
The first phase (2017-2019): WeChat mini games grow rapidly, and IAA dominates the mini game market. Officially launched at the end of 2017, WeChat Mini Game quickly accumulates user traffic pools with its click-to-play, brisk and convenient features, and the ability to smoothly connect with WeChat's multi-traffic scenarios. At that time, a large number of developers and practitioners entered the market, and WeChat Mini Games entered a stage of rapid growth since 2018, but at this time, most of the products were mainly IAA products.
Phase 2 (2019-2022): IAP products surge, with "Sheep and Sheep" leading the IAA mini-game. With the continuous improvement of users' requirements for game quality, more and more products with high gameplay and medium and heavy gameplay have appeared. At the same time, Tencent Advertising launched the "Preferred Program" in 2019, and more IAP in-app purchase products appeared, meeting the game needs of players. In contrast, the growth rate of IAA products has slowed down, but there are still many popular products, such as "Sheep is a Sheep".
The third stage (2022-present): the emergence of hybrid explosive products, the increase in profit and user scale. Medium and heavy mini-games are becoming more and more involuted, and the market competition has become more intense. Therefore, IAP in-app purchases began to add incentivized ads, which not only attracted light and zero Krypton players, but also increased product profits. At the end of April, QuestMobile released the 2023 China Mobile Internet Spring Report to disclose the WeChat mini program user scale data TOP list, of which the hybrid mini game "Mad Knights" MAU exceeded 84 million, ranking 22nd, surpassing the "ride code" in the travel service category. In addition, "King of Salted Fish" ranked 27th.
From the perspective of products, a number of explosive products accelerate the development process of mixed transformation. At the beginning of 2022, Haoteng's hybrid product "Fat Goose Gym" and Shenzhen Dream Workshop's "Girl and the Sea" in the second half of 2022 accelerated the development process of hybrid mini games. It is for this reason that hybrid mini games are favored by more and more developers. In fact, in addition to the development of the WeChat mini game ecology, it is also related to the continuous change of player needs.
From the perspective of mode, large-market users gradually prefer medium and light gameplay. The WeChat mini game product itself has the characteristics of click-to-play and fragmentation, and is backed by WeChat, and most of the target users are users who pursue leisure, entertainment, and lightness. From the perspective of the commonality of the current popular products, most of the head hybrid WeChat mini games are medium and light products, that is, products with heavy values packaged in a light casual gameplay. Relatively speaking, some heavy RPG and SLG products are declining in the best-selling list.
In fact, after users enter a game, the willingness to pay needs to be retained and continuously content provided for education. When the user is not willing to pay, the hybrid product allows him to stay through advertising, which can allow him to increase the possibility of subsequent payment. Therefore, hybrid monetization Mini game users do pay more later.
From the data point of view, the general internal purchase of mini games accounted for 70%-80% of the first day of payment, hybrid monetization mini games may only be 40%-50% on the first day, but the particularity of mixed products may allow more users to stay, follow-up payment opportunities are greater, and the overall payment volume will be higher.
(3) The rise of mixed change mini games and disassembly
By sorting out the current situation of the hybrid mini game and sorting out the development process. According to DataEye Research, two factors have contributed to the rise of hybrid mini-games:
First, it fits the ecological advantages of WeChat mini games. In 2022, the turnover of IAP Mini Games will increase by more than 100%, and the advertising monetization flow will also grow, increasing by more than 40%+, users and manufacturers have accepted and matured the business model of in-app purchase monetization, and ecological advantages such as low-cost purchase volume and huge user base provide a background and support for hybrid Mini Games to maximize user value. Official data points out that the overall commercial penetration rate of hybrid monetization is nearly 3 times higher than that of pure in-house purchases.
The second is to meet the game needs of target users. The rise of hybrid products may be inseparable from the popularity of medium and light products, and unlike IAA and IAP products, which are obviously layered in users, hybrid products can be compatible with two types of players at the same time. Rewarded advertising can improve the game experience of light casual users, thereby increasing game viscosity, hoping to increase the willingness of these players to pay; Similarly, the number of product users is large enough and the product activity is high enough, which can increase the willingness of Krypton Gold players to pay. In either dimension, it is positive for hybrid products.
2. Hybrid monetization mini game business model
At the 2023 Game Advertising Ecology Conference, Tencent Advertising demonstrated the profit calculation formula of WeChat Mini Games, which is essentially [LTV (Total User Lifetime Value) - CPA (User Installation Unit Price)] * User Volume.
For WeChat Mini Game products backed by WeChat, the number of users is not worried, the current WeChat Mini Game user scale has exceeded 1 billion, and showing a continuous growth trend.
In other words, increasing the total value of the user's life cycle and reducing the unit price of user installation is a direct way to increase profits. DataEye Research Institute disassembles the business model of hybrid mini games from two levels:
(1) LTV level
Previously, the advertising strategy of mixed monetization mini games could basically be described as a unified advertising payment strategy. This will lead to people with the ability to pay may see more advertisements and have a worse experience, which will affect retention to a certain extent; And users who are willing to watch ads to release advertising value is not enough and will be degraded.
In other words, giving him a small number of ads for paying users and increasing the frequency of advertising for advertisers can better solve this problem:
For advertising monetization users, setting up incentive ads in a medium and light product with IAP numerical core will allow more light, casual, and zero Krypton players to improve the game experience, so as not to have a big gap compared with Krypton gold players, and directly "dissuade" them. In this way, ad monetization players can not only increase the eCPM (advertising revenue per thousand impressions) and advertising frequency of the product, but also ensure the game retention rate of this type of player through a relatively good game experience.
For in-app purchase users, the more rewarded ads there are, the more resistant content users are to ads, which in turn reduces player retention. Therefore, many products will add the setting of "advertising cards" to obtain corresponding rewards by skipping watching rewarded ads, which also provides an opportunity for commercial payment in the early stage of the product than pure IAP in-app purchase products, and also improves the initial game experience of in-app purchase players, and improves the retention rate to transition to the subsequent operation stage of the product.
(2) CPA level
At present, WeChat Mini Games still mainly rely on performance advertising in the customer acquisition stage. DataEye-ADX delivery data check, in the past 90 days WeChat mini game list TOP10, hybrid mini game products occupy a number of seats, and the top 3 "King of Salted Fish", "Seeking Daqian" and "Mad Knights" are all mixed products.
On the whole, compared with mobile game apps, WeChat Mini Games have the characteristics of low purchase cost, which in turn improves the advantages of hybrid Mini Games at the purchase volume level.
The problem is that the WeChat mini game itself does not have much organic traffic, so it needs to face two different dimensions in the absorption dimension - attracting advertising users also satisfies paying users. So much so that there needs to be a certain layer in the dimension of creative assets.
From the perspective of benefits, the two types of users are pulled at the same time, which can attract a larger user group in a short period of time and expand the product user pool.
However, the disadvantage is that the purchase volume needs to face two different dimensions of users, so there needs to be a certain stratification in the creative material dimension. In other words, if manufacturers want to increase the amount of materials purchased, they need to have targeted new outputs corresponding to creative materials, which virtually increases production costs, even in the case of low overall CPA of WeChat mini games, it will also cause marketing cost pressure on manufacturers.
In general, in thinking about how to reduce the CPA dimension of mixed mini game purchases, it is essentially a test of the manufacturer's "balance ability, rhythm control" and "accurate mining ability for a wide range of users".
Third, the summary: the difficulties and trends of the hybrid mini-game
(1) Difficulties in the track
DataEye Research Institute observes the difficulties in the current hybrid mini game product series - information asymmetry and uncertainty. Although information asymmetry and uncertainty belong to the overall development difficulties of WeChat Mini Game. However, from the perspective of hybrid mini game products, information asymmetry and uncertainty are more critical.
To put it simply, mild IAA products focus on small and fast spirits, pay attention to speed in the product development process, and timely explore market innovation gameplay and hot spots; Heavy IAP products focus on certainty, and projects are established with market-proven gameplay (traditional themes + classic gameplay), and products need to pay more attention to quality in the development process to ensure the lower limit of the product.
From the perspective of product establishment, mixed products need to integrate innovative gameplay + excellent quality and improve uncertainty. Mixed mini-games are mainly medium and light gameplay, while the core is heavy game numbers, so the product and ensure that the gameplay is interesting and innovative, and at the same time, we must highlight the quality of the game. And innovative gameplay needs to educate market users, if the explosion is more like scratching the lottery, and more often the product is directly cut in the testing stage.
From the perspective of product research and development, the market is opaque, and it is easy to miss market hot spots if the development cycle is too long. At present, keeping up with market hotspots may be the main direction of most small game developers. For hybrid mini game products, it takes about 6 months for a product to be launched from project initiation, and the current domestic game market is fast-paced and hot changes. When a certain category starts to establish a project after the explosion, after the product is launched, it may be that the head product occupies a large share, and the performance of the new product is struggling; Or the hot spot has passed, and another category has begun to explode and has completely become cannon fodder.
(2) The trend of mixed change mini games
Through the dismantling of hybrid mini games, DataEye Research Institute has observed several trends in the development of mixed mini games:
First, medium and light gameplay packaging heavy game numerical products. For hybrid monetization products, the packaging of medium and light play products can attract more light casual pan-user groups to expand the user pool. Subsequently, the playability of heavy game values of the product, such as card RPG, placement RPG, etc., will improve player retention performance.
The second is the development of mini games to the APP side. In the past, in order to expand the user circle, many mobile game apps have completely transplanted APP products to the WeChat mini game terminal. Nowadays, with the explosion of hybrid mini game products, the corresponding mobile game APP side is also constantly expanding the product influence. According to the data, the iOS best-selling list of "King of Salted Fish" can be stable in the TOP50.
The third is the upgrading of overseas products in China. Overseas high-quality hybrid monetization products bring innovative R&D ideas to domestic game companies, and domestic companies will carry out Chinese localization and upgrading of products, or add Xian Xia elements, Three Kingdoms elements and so on. For example, the mowing category "Three Kingdoms Brothers" is an upgrade of "vampire elements" to a more recognizable Three Kingdoms theme among Chinese people, making the product more grounded and more acceptable to players.
The fourth is the extensive use of real human materials at the delivery level. Looking at the creative placement of "King of Salted Fish" so far this year, you will find that the content of live-action material has increased. DataEye Research Institute believes that as a hybrid product, it is actually necessary to focus on the core of heavy game values to attract more paying users to convert.
All in all, we can see that with its unique product features and user base, hybrid mini games are attracting a large number of developers to enter the game, making the entire hybrid mini game ecology enter a stage of rapid development and diversified prosperity.
What will be the future development of hybrid mini games and even WeChat mini games? It is worth the attention of all people in the game industry in China.