2023 is not as rosy as we initially thought.
When I participated in the 2022 Industry Annual Conference before, Grape Jun felt that the winter ice and snow of the game industry were melting. But now looking back at the whole year of 2023, everyone finally realized that some problems cannot be solved by the version number: new domestic mobile games seem to have fallen into the dilemma of involution, and reducing costs and increasing efficiency have become the most commonly mentioned keywords.
For the 2023 China Game Industry Annual Conference held two days ago, I believe that many people, like me, hope that it can answer: Chinese gamers, where should they go next?
At the scene, Grape Jun fully felt the industry's eagerness to find a way out - the China Game Growth Trend Forum held on the afternoon of December 14 gave me a glimpse of what it means to "follow the crowd", and it can be seen that everyone is very concerned about the topic of growth.
Except for the stage in front of us, the other three directions of the hall were full of people
Swipe left and right to view
There was also a bunch of spectators outside the hall who couldn't get in
Although this forum is about the mini game track with the most significant (300%) market revenue growth in the game industry this year, it is not to demonstrate the common sense of "mini games are developing very well". In his speech, Zhang Yijun, first vice chairman of the Audio and Digital Association, said that the current development of the mainland game industry is facing severe challenges: the demographic dividend has plummeted, the operating cost has risen, the player's payment Xi has changed, the product homogenization, the international situation is turbulent, and the market rules have changed, all of which are restricting the strength of the mainland game enterprises.
In this context, the new growth point of mini games is discussed because it has broad prospects and has not yet formed a scale, and it still needs to be explored by gamers together. To put it bluntly, the Audio and Digital Association has made this forum to help you sort out: how long can mini games grow, and how much market space is there to be tapped?
After listening to the sharing of digital practitioners, I also have a new perspective on mini games: the real growth opportunities may not only be the track of mini games, but also the new traffic ecology led by Douyin, which carries mini games. This ecology provides gamers with an outlet to leave the stock and roll up, and mini games are currently the most suitable product form to spread in this ecosystem.
01 How much "margin" is there for the mini-game that has entered the era of buying volume?
For all practitioners, one of the most reassuring messages revealed by this forum is that the development of the mini game market has not yet peaked.
First of all, judging from objective data, the market size of the mini game industry and Douyin mini games is still growing rapidly.
According to the sharing of Wang Xiangbin, founder of DataEye, it is expected that by 2025, the size of the mini game market will grow to 50 billion, and Wang Zijun, general manager of the interactive entertainment business of the giant engine, also said that since 2017, the macro market of the entire mini game market has been growing, and it is estimated that the monthly active users have exceeded 400 million, the market size has increased by more than 30% compared with last year, and the scale of in-app game turnover has increased by more than 100%.
Specific to Douyin mini games, according to Yao Liwen, the person in charge of Douyin mini games, their mini game DAU has grown by 150% year-on-year this year, the number of products has increased by 80%, and the revenue of in-app games has increased by 20 times.
Secondly, in addition to the data, the evolution of mini games also seems to show that there is still a lot of room to be explored in this market.
Wang Xiangbin, Wang Zijun and others all mentioned the development trend of medium and heavy games. To put it simply, mini game products are gradually jumping out of the stereotype that "the gameplay is all light and casual, and the system is single". In recent years, more and more popular models have proved that the acceptance range of young gamers for the complexity and depth of development may be wider than we originally thought.
In addition to the development trend of medium and heavy, the themes and painting styles of these products are also becoming more and more diverse.
There are two main reasons why Douyin Mini Games can eat so many types of products:
First, the user portraits on the platform are rich enough - no matter what age group, which gender, or what tier city the manufacturer wants to target, players can basically find the corresponding group on Douyin Mini Games.
Second, the behavioral Xi of Douyin Mini Game users has been initially developed - 70% of users will play 2 to 4 Mini Games at the same time, indicating that they currently have the need to play multiple products.
As for the ecology of Douyin mini games, what kind of games are suitable for and how many categories of products can be afforded, no one seems to be able to give a specific answer at present. Huge Engine mentioned during the event that Douyin Mini Games started relatively late, and they can't fully explain the characteristics of this ecology at this stage.
This is in line with what we talked about earlier - Douyin launched an open platform in September last year, and the ecological construction has not been carried out for too long, and it takes time for users to adapt to the new ecology, so there are still many new traffic "to be activated" in Douyin Mini Games. Giant Engine also emphasized that they will not only focus on Douyin users who are already playing Mini Games, but will also explore and tap those users who have not been converted into players by Mini Game-related content.
This situation makes the market potential of Douyin Mini Games more difficult to accurately estimate, and it also means that the platform can actually carry more types of games than it does now.
Many gamers do see this opportunity: from the perspective of advertising, the offensive of mini game products on traffic is gradually increasing.
Compared with Q1 in 2023, the amount of mini game materials that DataEye paid attention to in Q3 has doubled. In the second half of this year, the marketing scale of Douyin mini games, a huge engine, also saw a significant increase of 83%, and the number of activated users increased by more than 40 times.
Regarding the current situation, Wang Xiangbin gave a brief summary in PPT: Mini games have entered a new stage of development - the era of buying volume.
When I first saw this sentence, Grape Jun chuckled in my heart: So in the future, I will simply compare who has more money and can afford it? Will I still enter the traffic dilemma in the end? But after listening to the whole forum, I found that the situation is not the same as I expected:
First of all, compared with APP games, the unit price of the current purchase volume of mini games is still relatively low. According to Yao Liwen, at present, developers can bid at least about three cents of CPA to promote their products on Douyin.
Secondly, the traffic of mini games cannot be solved by "buying, buying, buying" alone. Wang Xiangbin emphasized that in addition to traditional buying, influencer marketing and private domain construction have provided new ways to acquire volume for mini game products. At the same time, the single buying path is becoming less and less feasible, as it leads to a sharp rise in costs.
On the Douyin Mini Game platform, many products are indeed trying non-traditional advertising acquisition methods. At present, Mini Game manufacturers have released more than 32,000 publisher tasks, and the penetration rate of high-quality game videos and influencers can exceed 80%.
Based on this information, there is a high probability that mini games will still be the growth outlet of the game industry in the future, and the Douyin mini game platform also has great market potential.
However, the mini game industry has entered a new stage in the era of volume purchase, which means that for entrants, the importance of effective volume acquisition has become higher than before, and the new method of volume acquisition has also put forward higher requirements for everyone's diversified marketing capabilities.
02 The release of a wave of streams cannot solve the problem of the acquisition of mini games
Regarding the matter of volume, Grape Jun noticed that many industry guests emphasized a point of view: the acquisition of mini games is not something that needs to be paid attention to by publishing, it affects every link of the upstream and downstream of mini games, as well as every stage of the life cycle of mini game products.
First of all, when the product is established, the creators of the mini game need to change the starting point - the core key that everyone needs to pay attention to is not the popularity of the category itself, but whether the gameplay and content are suitable for dissemination and acquisition.
Hou Tianle, CEO of Changsha Youpin Technology Co., Ltd. (products include "I Raise You", "Attack on Chinese Characters", etc.), mentioned that the acquisition of mini games is a problem that should also be considered in research and development, and if it is purely done by post-release posts, it will be more passive. Therefore, he recommends that marketing operators also participate in the game development process, because these people often understand traffic preferences better than R&D.
Zhang Yuchen, a partner of Beijing Tuyue Technology Co., Ltd. (whose products include "Modification Battle", "How Good Is Being an Emperor", "Civilian Counterattack", etc.), also said that when they selected products, the first stage was to examine whether the product gameplay and content were combined with hot spots, because it was necessary to infer whether the follow-up videos made by Douyin experts could be spread.
In the preparation stage of the project, the Douyin mini game platform and the giant engine will also provide some data and information to the creators, so that the latter can find the current hot spots faster and more accurately, and then use this to analyze what painting style, theme, and gameplay to choose.
Developers can quickly learn about what's trending at the moment with Hot Stars
From the perspective of the giant engine, it is very important to help developers with this information in advance for the subsequent success of their products: "When we wait for the release stage of the mini game, we will think about these things, in fact, it is relatively lagging behind." ”
Secondly, when the product is launched, the efficient acquisition of mini games also pays attention to skills. There are two important points here:
First, the direct advertising creative of the product must be short but can quickly arouse the user's interest. This sounds like a very basic requirement, but for Douyin Mini Game products, due to the special ecology of the Mini Game Platform led by Douyin, they have to design the ads to be shorter and more eye-catching.
In this regard, the giant engine explained that Douyin is actually a decentralized distribution platform, and its main content forms are short videos and live broadcasts. This kind of content itself is very entertaining, and if you want to grab the attention of users in such an ecological environment, you must let users understand the purpose of playing and experience the coolness of numerical feedback in 20 seconds to 1 minute.
To put it simply, the advertisements of Douyin Mini Game products need to be no less inferior than the short videos on the platform in order to be noticed by users in the massive content. This sounds difficult, but the huge engine has summed up some methodologies: first, the material painting style should be recognizable and memorable, and secondly, it should be combined with the three-stage creative rule to make the beginning eye-catching, the middle section explains the gameplay, and the end guides the download.
Second, there are various ways to acquire Douyin Mini Games, in addition to the traditional bidding to buy volume, Douyin's characteristics as a content platform allow Mini Games to rely on content to acquire customers. Therefore, the promotion of Mini Game products cannot rely solely on direct investment, but also make good use of native short videos and native advertisements.
Wang Zijun specifically mentioned that developers who do content marketing on Douyin should increase the coverage rate of native advertising to 100%, and the actual combat performance will be better, and developers can get better traffic synergies by binding the form of native number + investment + anchor.
In terms of content acquisition, the publisher's plan (created by Douyin experts to attract traffic to the product) is also often mentioned by guests: in Changsha Finger Network Technology Co., Ltd. (products include "Badminton Wars", "Everyday Fishing", etc.) According to Xiang Jilang, the publisher plan is the biggest difference between Douyin Mini Games and other platforms, and it is also the biggest highlight of the platform;
When Zhang Yuchen talked about the long-term retention of the small game "Modified Operations", he also specifically mentioned that the highest proportion of return sources is video (27%), and the main source of their video content is the publisher plan.
According to the explanation of the giant engine, the reason why the publisher's plan is effective is that the content released by the influencer has a relatively weak sense of marketing and does not have an official position, so users will not have too strong vigilance and resistance to this form of download drainage.
Combined with the above two major points, the most common way for a Douyin mini game to enter the game is direct investment + content traffic expansion.
Finally, in the long-term operation stage, Mini Game products will face greater challenges in gaining volume. For example, many Mini Game products have a high user churn rate and poor retention performance, which affects the product life cycle.
At the event, Wang Zijun focused on how to make a long-term breakthrough in Douyin mini games:
First, game content updates, as well as delivery, must be continuous.
As we talked about in the previous article, the acquisition capacity of Douyin Mini Game products should be considered at the beginning of the project to combine platform hotspots and facilitate communication. However, hot spots will change, and if you want to do long-term mini game products, you need to update them frequently and incorporate more new content and gameplay that combine the current hot spots.
Developers should start with a gameplay system that is compatible and easy to update. In the long run, only if R&D is updated periodically, direct advertising and issuer plans can continue to produce effective capture materials.
PUGC content contributed more than 24% to the retention of mini games
Second, developers should make good use of the ecological functions of the platform itself - in order to solve the problem of short product cycle and difficult retention of Mini Games, Douyin Mini Games and Giant Engine are gradually launching some new tools.
For example, in the sidebar of the home page, some manufacturers who have done better at present have achieved a penetration rate of 35-50% through this tool, and its improvement in product retention is basically more than 18%;
The improvement of these revisit functions has increased the user and retention of Douyin Mini Games in the second half of this year, compared with last year, and even compared with the first half of this year, by 20-40%. Obviously, if manufacturers can make good use of these tools, it is possible to achieve more with less in terms of retention.
The alienation card is inserted in the video feed of Douyin,
Users may swipe when they swipe a short video
Third, the product itself should also do a good job in position management, so that you can also maintain close contact with fans (private domain traffic) like Douyin talents.
According to the observation of the giant engine, every 1,000 native ad impressions will bring an average of 3 homepage visits to the Mini Game product. If the product itself can take this opportunity to stabilize its own private domain traffic pool, it can save more effort and money in the future.
To sum up, the acquisition of Douyin mini games is a work that requires continuous investment from the beginning of the project. Previously, a friend in the industry also told Grape Jun that the common denominator of many popular mini games is that as long as the ROI is correct, the purchase volume will continue to be invested, and the budget will be consumed as much as possible.
03 How long does it take to pay back?
Then the key question comes: how long does it take for the ROI of the mini game to be correct?
According to the giant engine, at present, on the Douyin mini game platform, the average recovery cycle of IAA products is less than 3 days, and the recycling cycle of IAP products is more than 7 days.
In the future, this cycle may become even shorter.
On the one hand, Douyin Mini Games continues to expand its own ways to gain volume and enrich its content productivity.
In terms of the way to obtain volume, they have provided some new methods for manufacturers this year, such as the alienation card we talked about earlier, the sidebar on the home page, etc.;The live broadcast traffic pool launched this year is actually equivalent to opening up a new traffic track for the mini game,And now the number of Douyin users who watch the mini game through live broadcast every day has reached 40 million。
Regarding content production, the relevant person in charge of Douyin Mini Games said that manufacturers do not need to worry too much about not being able to find talents to do videos and live broadcasts in the future, because they will establish cooperation with more professional MCN institutions and high-quality talents in the future, and try to ensure that there is enough manpower support for content output.
On the other hand, on the matter of how to make the acquisition more effective, that is, how to make the revenue return faster, the giant engine is also continuing to explore more methods.
Wang Zijun said that there are three advantages of the next huge engine to focus on the delivery effect: stabilizing the ROI on the first day, exploring high-value groups, and global advertising capabilities. In layman's terms, it is to return on investment faster, find users who can bring income more accurately, and combine the ecological characteristics of the Douyin mini game platform itself to do communication.
04 The tuyere is not only a mini-game track, but also a new traffic ecology led by Douyin
After listening to the whole forum, I began to rethink a question: why has mini games become a growth outlet?
In the past, when I talked to others about this issue, I would always be told that it was because the APP was too expensive to buy (I was forced to embark on the road of making mini games), or because of the technical premise of becoming bigger and stronger (the cache of the mini program increased, etc.).
But in the final analysis, these seem to be just the basis for the development of Mini Games (the level of technology allows, the cost threshold is low), and it is not enough to explain why making Mini Games can make money - after all, low cost does not mean that the income is necessarily high.
At the same time, some people have long been convinced that there is still potential for the development of mini games, and specifically focused on the platform of Douyin mini games - during the middle of ChinaJoy, Wu Jiawei, vice president of content consumption of the giant engine, said that the core development focus of the giant engine this year is mini program games and Douyin mini games, because the industry will usher in a wave of large-scale new growth dividends. When the time comes to the end of the year, looking at the data shared by everyone at this forum, it can be said that Wu Jiawei's words have been confirmed: in the second half of this year, the marketing consumption of the huge engine Douyin mini game is still growing rapidly.
Looking back at the speeches of the guests at this forum, I feel that I have gradually figured it out: as long as it comes to the opportunity to increase acquisition and income, almost no one will single out the mini games and say how the track is, but will keep mentioning the ecology of Douyin.
The developer feels that the key to the project design is whether the content and gameplay are topical and suitable for Douyin experts to make materials, so that the product can spread in the ecology of Douyin Mini Games;
When selecting products, issuers will first look at whether the product gameplay and content are suitable for dissemination in the platform ecosystem, and then focus on the use of the issuer plan.
In order to increase the number of products to be guaranteed, the Douyin mini game platform chooses to support high-quality creators and cooperate with more MCN institutions, in fact, from another perspective, it is consolidating its own content ecology;
The suggestions on entry and breakthrough methods put forward by the giant engine on the delivery and acquisition are actually closely related to the ecosystem. Including as mentioned above, it is recommended that mini game products open official accounts and do private domain construction, in fact, it can also be understood as suggesting that the product integrate and adapt to the content ecology of Douyin.
You will find that the new traffic ecology led by Douyin has almost reversed everyone's understanding of what games should be played, as well as how to do delivery and operation.
And such an ecology, which is different from the traditional one, has also given birth to more product design ideas that we have never seen before. Xiang Jilang gave a more detailed explanation of this: Mini game products should be reversed through the effect of influencer videos, and analyze whether the design of their selling points is reasonable; Influencers should create more videos with highlights, stalks, and explosive points according to their own understanding of the product and users - it is in such a closed loop that there are more popular types of mini game products such as finding faults and counterattacks, which are rare in the original APP game ecology in the industry.
Therefore, to determine whether a mini game can be successful in the future, perhaps we can no longer focus on categories and gameplay as in the past. In Yao Liwen's words: "A small game that can produce good content in Douyin is a good game." ”
This idea of working backwards from content dissemination also made me realize that the real growth outlet behind the mini game may actually be the new traffic ecology led by Douyin. It brings more possibilities to the way the game spreads and explodes.
In the game industry dilemma of "buying volume will eventually roll up", this is like a small outlet. Whether or not they can find an outlet to come out and seize the growth opportunities of the industry is a test of whether practitioners can quickly recognize and adapt to such a new traffic ecology. At the same time, Douyin Mini Games, which are seamlessly adapted to this traffic ecology, may also be an option that all Mini Game entrants should focus on.