Text | Bullet Finance Fu Yancui
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With the number of new domestic online game versions approved in December exceeding 100, the game industry has become more lively after continuing to release positive signals to support the prosperity and healthy development of the online game industry.
In the capital market, the game sector has recovered sharply: as of yesterday's A-share close, Chinese media, electric soul network, etc. rose more than 2%, and game ETF funds closed up. In addition, the industry's leading stocks such as Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Perfect World, and Gigabit also closed in the red.
On the enterprise side, the significant increase in the number of game version numbers issued and the improvement of the capital market have injected a "booster" into game entrepreneurs. A game entrepreneur bluntly said to "Bullet Finance": "I am now full of confidence in the continuous improvement of performance. ”
In fact, the gaming market over the past few years has made a lot of money for practitioners. Not to mention Tencent Games and NetEase Games, which often generate tens of billions of dollars, even small and medium-sized enterprise entrepreneurs have revealed to "Bullet Finance" that in the past one or two years, the company's business has maintained steady growth, and DAU has reached 3 million.
In this context, a group of entrepreneurs saw the new opportunities for the development of the game industry and plunged into the track with confidence. According to the data of Qichacha, there are currently 408,300 active/surviving enterprises with the keyword "online game", and this year alone, there are as many as 134,000 new online game enterprises in the mainland.
In the coming 2024, a group of entrepreneurs in the game industry are poised to take off.
1 Good, good, good
"The actual sales revenue of the domestic game market exceeded 300 billion for the first time. ”
"The number of game users reached a new high, reaching 668 million. ”
"In December, the number of new domestic online game versions exceeded 100. ”
……
In the past few days, a series of good news has almost swiped the WeChat circle of friends of Chen Weiming, the founder of the sandbox network, whose company has been committed to the development of UGC platforms for overseas games.
Chen Weiming told Bullet Finance that although as an entrepreneur who has been optimistic about the game industry for a long time, he was not surprised by these positive signals, but when the good news appeared one after another, he and his peers were still excited.
"The regulators are obviously guiding the game industry to develop in a standardized and healthy direction, and while paying attention to industry issues, they also see the potential for the development of the game industry. Chen Weiming said.
With the succession of positive news, Chen Weiming is further confident in the continuous improvement of the company's performance: "This is mainly based on two logics, one is that people are spending more time online, and the importance of virtual space in people's lives is increasing, and the other is that the Chinese game team has shown strong competitiveness in the world, and we still have huge room for growth." ”
According to him, the sandbox network is different from the common shallow UGC based on inherent content on the market, which mainly attracts more game practitioners with the creativity of the product, and encourages developers to create freely on the platform, without being restricted by gameplay, theme or art style, so that developers can create creative gameplay in the sandbox Blockman Go ecosystem.
"Benefiting from the early overseas strategy, the Sandbox Network not only experienced a wave of growth in 2020 - revenue increased tenfold and the user scale increased by 300%. Today, the company's business has maintained steady growth, and the number of DAUs has reached 3 million. And in Russia, India, Southeast Asia and other places, there are developers who continue to develop games on the sandbox network platform. Chen Weiming said.
In fact, the gaming market has been buzzing lately.
In recent days, A-share companies including Perfect World, Gigabit, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Giant Network, Chinese Media, Electric Soul Network, Kaiying Network, Xinghui Entertainment and many other game companies have issued announcements on repurchasing and increasing their shareholdings, with the repurchase amount reaching nearly 1 billion yuan, including Kaiying Network and other successive holdings, extending to the secondary market, and the recovery of game stocks is obvious; in terms of Hong Kong stocks, Tencent Holdings has also continuously announced that the cumulative repurchase exceeds 2 billion Hong Kong dollars.
A few days ago, Hong Kong game stocks and A-share game software indices continued to rebound higher, and the gains have an expanding trend - as of the close of trading on December 28, 2023, Tencent Holdings rose 2.8%, NetEase rose more than 3.3%, Bilibili rose more than 5%, Chinese media, electric soul network, etc. rose more than 2%.
The gaming industry is on the rise.
2 Entrepreneurs who are ready to take off
According to the latest "2023 China Game Industry Report", the actual sales revenue of the domestic game market exceeded the 300 billion mark for the first time this year, and the number of users reached a new high, reaching 668 million.
With such a huge market demand, the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of mainland game practitioners has been born - entrepreneurs who smell opportunities are pouring in.
According to Qichacha data, there are 408,300 online game-related enterprises in mainland China. In the past decade, the number of registrations of online game-related enterprises in mainland China has been increasing year by year. From 2020 to 2022, there will be 48,200, 91,000 and 104,500 new online game-related enterprises in mainland China, respectively.
Photo / Qichacha
It is worth mentioning that the number of online game-related enterprises in mainland China this year is as high as 134,000, of which 126,100 were added in the first 11 months, a year-on-year increase of 30.58%.
Photo / Qichacha
With the continuous influx of entrepreneurs, high-quality products and going overseas may become a new engine for the performance growth of game companies.
When Bullet Finance talked to a number of entrepreneurs about the future growth opportunities of the game industry, most of the entrepreneurs gave the answer of "high-quality and going global". They believe: "There is no need to repeat the high-quality products, and the competition in the domestic market is fierce, and the craze for everyone to go overseas may be more enthusiastic than before." ”
Wang Zi, a game practitioner, told Bullet Finance that in fact, the trend of high-quality games is forcing game companies to focus on content creation and develop higher-quality game products, and some traditional independent game studios may get better development opportunities.
In fact, in recent years, domestic games have achieved remarkable results in overseas markets, and domestic games have gradually become frequent visitors to the major global game rankings.
Sensor Tower, a third-party data company, recently announced the list of mobile games going overseas, including 37 Chinese game manufacturers such as Gigabit, Century Huatong, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, and Shenzhou Taiyue, which were shortlisted for the top 100 global mobile game publishers in terms of revenue in November, attracting a total of 1.87 billion US dollars.
CITIC Securities also believes that the current distribution of edition numbers is still at a normal pace, and at the same time, the regulator emphasizes the encouragement of high-quality original games and games to go overseas. In the medium to long term, there are still opportunities for the development of China's game industry, especially related companies that focus on high-quality content and overseas development.
Overall, a group of game entrepreneurs are gaining momentum.
"If I have the opportunity, I'm ready to rejoin the ranks of entrepreneurs. Wang Zi, who gave up his game project a few years ago due to financial problems, said to "Bullet Finance".
Chen Weiming also judged that the game market will continue to grow in 2024, but it will also slow down slightly with the improvement of the global epidemic. He added.
*Note: Wang Zi is a pseudonym.
American Editor | Qianqian
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