The winds in the domestic mobile game market are deflecting — and if you ask questions from the perspective of who is making blockbuster games, you might come to a similar conclusion.
In the past, in terms of revenue proportion and player scale, Tencent was the absolute protagonist of the market. Using Tencent as a benchmark to measure other game manufacturers is a mainstream analytical perspective. But in terms of the so-called game popularity, or super explosive, Tencent has not brought surprises to the market for a long time.
Its latest blockbuster masterpiece "Peace Elite" was released more than five years ago. In the first half of this year, among the many mobile games released by Tencent, the performance of "Dawn Awakening", which was pinned on high hopes, did not meet expectations, and the remaining two games "White Night Aurora" and "Metal Slug: Awakening" were only mediocre.
During this period, Mihayou's "Genshin" was far ahead in the field of two-dimensional dimensions, and the more topical works in the new works are more from NetEase's "Egg Boy Party" and Mihayou's "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" and other works. This means that from the perspective of content quality performance, it seems that Tencent as an absolute benchmark at this stage is no longer so objective.
Such market results are not unrelated to the state of the gaming industry over the past few years. Since the tightening of the game version, manufacturers have become more cautious about polishing their works, and at the same time the market has entered the market in the best of the "army", and the frontal battlefield is more fierce and cruel than in the past. No matter who it is, it is difficult to maintain a constant winning situation.
However, this does not mean that there is no winning law, but under the leadership of new rules, the domestic mobile game market will be redefined at this stage.
From volume IP to volume gameplay
Judging from the product performance of Mihayou and NetEase, mobile game players are choosing again. The long-standing pattern of the mobile game market has loosened, which can be attributed to the fact that the core competition between game manufacturers has been different - players will tend to choose more playable games in this strong competitive environment.
In the past, the domestic game market was once dominated by IP. In April 2015, NetEase publicly tested the mobile game "Fantasy Westward Journey" and officially opened the popular IP "end change hands" play. In the following two years, more than 20 classic IP games were transformed into mobile games, among which, NetEase launched products such as "Journey to the West", "Qiannu Ghost" and "Tianxia", while Tencent released "Blood Legend", "Journey", "New Sword Warrior Love" and "Fantasy Immortal".
The success of the "end-to-hand" play is the result of the complementary effect of the player credibility accumulated by the end-game IP itself and the wave of mobile Internet, and this formula has been continuously continued by game manufacturers. NetEase has also paid more and more attention to big IPs, and has signed Harry Potter, Marvel, and Diablo in the past few years.
In this era, Tencent and NetEase have basically laid the market pattern. However, the difference between the two is that Tencent's "end-to-hand" is mainly agent-based, while NetEase's mobile game works are self-developed results, which determines the different right of the two to decide on the freedom of IP development, on the other hand, NetEase's self-developed genes may also affect the development path of the next two completely different products.
Despite the popularity of popular IP "end-to-end transfers", Tencent and NetEase also have to face the torture of IP vitality and the transformation of market trends themselves.
In recent years, the domestic game market has shifted from "volume" IP to "volume" play, which represents the arrival of a prosperous era of content to the game market.
Experience, gameplay, and content are the three keywords of content to the game market. In this market, game products focus on the high-quality creation and continuous filling of the core content of the game, and they generally focus on the user's experience quality and feedback in the game content.
At present, Mihayou has opened its own strong market with "Genshin", and NetEase has also joined the competition with "Egg Party". Among them, the emergence of "Egg Party" has made NetEase stand in the market again, and its popularity has also made it officially become the next game of NetEase in Ding Lei's mouth to be done for ten years.
On May 27 last year, "Egg Party" was officially open beta, and before that, it had received more than 5 million pre-orders. According to Kwan, the producer of "Egg Party", they have a small team size internally, with regular departments such as planning, programming, art, and QA. But the difference is that the team saw the opportunity under the overlap of online social and casual competitive games at the beginning of the project, and decided to feature the editor and the player's creative ability.
In detail, Egg Party has the advantage of entering a blue ocean realm, but the challenge is that it requires real-time physics calculations to ensure multi-player same-frequency interactive entertainment, and through technology to achieve dramatic and exaggerated physical feedback. Not only that, the team's biggest breakthrough point is how to create an easy-to-use but highly free editor to ensure the level and magnitude of UGC gameplay, which is a huge test of product planning and product design.
For the former, the team relied on NetEase's past self-developed technology precipitation to overcome it. For the latter, the team took advantage of the rich experience of the technical planners in the UGC editor, and finally perfectly presented the formula of "party game + UGC editor + tide play world view", including the social interaction of the "lobby" of Eggboy Island, the editor experience with strong social and sharing attributes, and a variety of game modes for competition and entertainment.
As a result, this party game with the theme of trendy play, with its casual competition setting and strong social attributes, as well as its rich gameplay and gratifying painting style, quickly occupied a number of game lists, and rushed to 100 million monthly activities, filling an important gap in the mobile game market. Behind this, NetEase's long-term insistence on self-research and the high DAU operation experience accumulated in the past are also secretly playing a role.
In fact, in a market where content is dominated by games, the survival rules of games have been rewritten. This means that even if they have lagged behind, game makers can once again grasp the opportunity to overtake in corners. With the popularity of "Egg Party", NetEase Games will redefine the explosive style in the new market dominated by gameplay.
Social traffic story reconstruction
Not only is the change in the core of game competition that has allowed game manufacturers other than Tencent to regain the opportunity, but the new traffic story of the game industry has also brought other manufacturers to a relatively fair marketing starting line.
In the past, Tencent's social chain advantages almost determined that its victory in the MOBA mobile game field was irresistible. Just as Honor of Kings' strong social attributes were one of its trump cards, at its peak, the game was already defined as "a new way of socializing."
But the social chain is suitable for MOBA, but it does not mean that it is necessary for all other mobile games, and more importantly, the traffic story they face together has reached a new chapter.
On the one hand, the traffic battlefield of games has undergone tremendous changes, and the rise of new traffic channels such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu has given major game manufacturers a fair chance to compete. On the other hand, in the past, volume advertising often seemed simple and crude, but now performance advertising is popular, and the synergy between brand and performance advertising is strengthening as manufacturers pay more attention to presenting the core gameplay and sophisticated production of games. In this market environment, mobilizing the enthusiasm of ordinary players to share in social media will also become a compulsory course for game manufacturers.
At the same time, social traffic itself has changed. In addition to the serious demand for competitive gaming, there is a part of the gap that needs to be met urgently, that is, in the middle ground between casual games and competitive games, users in this area need some challenging content, but do not want to be too challenging, which is another test of social games.
And this is exactly what NetEase's "Egg Party" is good at. From the content side, "Egg Party" creates a fantasy world behind the blind box vending machine, such a game world view naturally attracts the audience of the game itself, in terms of gameplay, it has both the main multiplayer party socialization, but also a certain strategy and competitive space, and at the same time there is a low-threshold UGC creation gameplay, enough to support the highlights of the game itself.
In addition, "limited-time events" are an important operational means to motivate players. In addition to the long-term update rhythm of "party season", "Egg Boy Party" has a very heavy limited-time event planning, emphasizing the freshness it brings to players, in the immersive virtual event "Weightless Music Festival" launched on the first anniversary, the game "decorate" Eggboy Island into a carnival park with new decorative sets and interactive gameplay, and invited three bands of Summer Invasion Project, the landlord's cat, and the escape plan to perform in the game - this plan fundamentally refreshes the player's game experience. It is enough to mobilize its enthusiasm and motivation to share and spread.
In addition to the content side, on the marketing side, "Egg Party" plays content IP linkage, and some netizens have counted that "Egg Party" is linked once every 10 days on average, which can be called the "courtesan" of the linkage session. Not only are there IP with great national influence such as "Pigman", "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" and "Ultraman", but also consumer goods such as Green Arrow, Quduoduo, Alps, etc., this summer, it has launched a phenomenal linkage covering online and offline with the top Michelle Ice City, which penetrates all aspects of public life in an all-round way and invisibly builds a solid brand moat.
At present, on the social platform, it is enough to see from the sharing content of "Egg Party" that the traffic idea of this game has been completely different from the marketing method of traditional games, but has recreated a unique marketing channel through its own social attributes.
From a results perspective, this is indeed an effective path. Since its launch, "Egg Party" has been in the top ten of the iOS double chart for a long time, and its top ranking has often fluctuated with the launch of new games, but with the blessing of game planning such as the anniversary version, the game quickly regained its popularity and immediately catapulted back into the top three of the free and best-selling double list.
This is a social traffic story reconstruction that belongs to the "Egg Party". It successfully found a way to surprise big DAU games through the UGC creation and social attributes that come with the game, plus traffic positions such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu.
AI: The next step
Not only are the dimensions of content, gameplay, traffic, channels, etc. changing, but among all the factors affecting the game industry landscape, there is also an important element with great potential and has been slightly developed, which is AI.
There is no denying that AI technology is changing the interactive gameplay of games, whether it is interaction with intelligent NPCs or the generation of new interactive content, it will bring players a completely different experience. This experience fundamentally keeps users fresh to extend the life of the game. For manufacturers, this may be an effective means of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and will become one of the most important operational infrastructure for game manufacturers.
In this context, game manufacturers entering the AI era in advance may have a head start in the next round of market competition.
Among all game manufacturers, NetEase Games cut into the AI layout at an earlier point in time. It is understood that NetEase has established Fuxi Lab, a research institute specializing in games and pan-entertainment AI since 2017, focusing on the landing application of artificial intelligence in games, and also established NetEase Interactive Entertainment AI Lab in the same year, which jointly provides technical landing support for the project team.
In terms of specific landing, NetEase has applied AI technology to various scenarios such as combat systems, face pinching, intelligent NPCs, and anti-plug-in systems, which are reflected in games such as "Qiannu Ghost", "A Dream of Rivers and Lakes", and "Oracle".
Among the new works, NetEase's application and layout of AI technology have gone further.
Today, Against the Water and Cold can be called an AI game. It is understood that NetEase has applied AI technology to many aspects such as face pinching, combat, and plot of "Against the Water and Cold", and reconstructs the player experience from the underlying system. For example, in terms of basic setting, the MeInGame technology jointly developed by Fuxi Lab and researchers at the University of Michigan even allows users to upload pictures to achieve the desired target look; In terms of gameplay, you can not only play dungeons with AI teammates, but also encounter intelligent NPCs everywhere, and intuitively feel their unique characters and the connotative game world behind them.
The use of AI technology in Egg Party has greatly improved the quality of its content. One of the highlights of the game is its map editor, and the team incorporated AI to facilitate the chemistry of AI+UGC. AIGC technology is used to realize one-click color change of maps, one-click generation of pixel calligraphy and painting, as well as creature settings and plot editing, which greatly reduces the production threshold for creators and provides more possibilities for the variety of maps. This kind of design autonomy greatly stimulates players' creative interest, and at the same time, it also makes the active UGC creation ecology of "Egg Boy Party" its own.
The addition of AI technology is not only to build a new content ecology and promote player experience, for game manufacturers, its longer-term impact lies in optimizing the cost structure of game production and comprehensively improving content production efficiency.
Taking art as an example, the most intuitive cost reduction effect is presented here. AI can complete some basic art works in just a few minutes to assist creative artists to work efficiently, thereby reducing related manpower and capital investment; Not only that, AI can also help produce a large number of pictures and animation materials, which can be directly used for social platform communication, saving material costs from marketing, and accelerating the pace of implementation of communication solutions.
In fact, the benefits of AI technology for gaming are being recognized across the industry. Lu Xiaoyin, CEO of Perfect World Games, once said in an interview that the game industry currently has the best application scenarios of AI technology, and the application of AI technology is subversive to the game industry. From the market-related feedback, AIGC-related technologies can improve work efficiency in production links such as text graphics, text animation, audio generation and code writing with AI.
Up to now, NetEase has developed dozens of AI efficiency improvement tools, covering voice generation, original image generation, video motion capture, model generation and other links. In addition, its AI can already participate in the production of art resources, game experience optimization, and operation and marketing.
This means that the seeds planted by NetEase in the field of AI will be successively fruited in the next decade - with the help of AI, NetEase Games will have the opportunity to contribute new explosions in terms of player experience and content quality, and benefit in the long term in terms of production cost structure and content production efficiency.
At present, the trend of the mobile game market has changed, and today, when content, gameplay, channels, traffic and even the underlying technology are undergoing innovative evolution, a big reshuffle belonging to the domestic game market is quietly coming.