With the development of the game industry and the reduction of the demographic dividend in the mainland, the slogan of "high-quality" has sounded more and more times in the industry.
However, there are various indications that Tencent, which has been ranked first in the domestic game revenue list for many years, is not satisfied with its own product capabilities.
As early as December 15, 2022, at Tencent's internal staff meeting, Ma Huateng pointed out that the current internal products are too dependent on traffic.
"Don't tell me to buy in the future, I don't believe in this anymore, let others do this thing, we won't do it in the future. ”
Later, at the 2023 Tencent Games Conference, Ma Xiaoyi, senior vice president of Tencent, targeted the solution to this problem: "Tencent Games is transforming from a platform company to a product company. ”
On December 28, Tencent's last game released this year, Cookie Man: Kingdom, was launched. Looking back on Tencent's games in the past year, we can see that there is a geometric gap between ideals and execution on the product side.
The trump card is still esports
From a product perspective, Tencent Games in 2023 has the following characteristics:
1. In terms of categories, it still adopts a full-coverage approach, and the two key projects in 2023, "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" and "Yuanmeng Star", make up for Tencent Games' previous gaps in SOC and party games;
2. Tencent's second game ushered in an explosive period this year, and 6 of the 18 new games in Tencent's game conference in 2023 accounted for one-third;
3. The core trump card is still an e-sports game with high DAU: "The Battle of the Golden Shovel" exceeded 10 million daily live in April, and two new e-sports head projects of "Valorant" and "Yuan Dream Star" were added.
Let's sort them out one by one.
First of all, in terms of overall product distribution, it is almost the same as in previous years:
Relying on a huge agency business, Tencent Games has involved almost all game categories. However, it is worth pointing out that many products, including several head products developed by Tencent, have fallen into the embarrassing situation of "the peak in the first month".
Of course, this does not mean that the product has failed. The so-called "peak" is only compared to some phenomenal products in 2023, including Tencent's "Valorant" and "Yuanmeng Star" launched this year.
E-sports is still the trump card of Tencent Games.
But this is hardly surprising. Tencent Games has a success rate in e-sports that far exceeds that of other types of games, which stems from its usual product methodology.
Looking back at the history of Tencent Games, we will find that Tencent Games has never been a believer in a certain category or theme, but more like an opportunist who is good at seizing opportunities.
Whenever an opportunity arises, Tencent will always be the first to perceive the changes in users' attention and mobilize all resources to focus on the battle.
For example, when the "Battle Royale" mode emerged, Tencent was able to win the authorization of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" at the first time, and let TiMi and Photon develop two games to compete at the same time.
Strong execution ensures that Tencent is always the last to come when opportunities arise.
In the PVP game mode of e-sports, the consumption of game content is slow, and players demand a lot of feedback, and most of the feedback is urgent. This gives Tencent the possibility to exploit its strengths and avoid its weaknesses, grasp the core demands of players with a strong operation model, do a good job in player battle services, and quickly break the two circles of "game" and "social", allowing players to enter the team opening mode.
The three-step process of "operation review - rapid iteration - traffic empowerment" to achieve rapid surpassing of opponents.
Usually when it comes to Tencent's e-sports products, we will notice its three advantages: 1. Flood irrigation from the two traffic sources of WeChat and QQ; 2. Strong hand-to-hand combat ability, and any innovative gameplay launched by competing products can quickly keep up with and surpass; 3. Mature e-sports team building and operation experience.
It is worth paying attention to the change in the second point. This year, Tencent is playing more of a pioneering role in the gameplay of some e-sports projects.
For example, "The Battle of the Golden Shovel", a game that has been online for two years, has exploded again this year with an astonishing increase in users: Q1 exceeded 10 million daily active users, and Q2 broke out again to exceed 15 million.
The core reason lies in the iteration of its regular season gameplay, as well as the freshness brought by the successive modes such as Heavenly Chosen Lucky Star, 4V4 Red and Blue Battle, Wishing you prosperity, and Matchless Hundred Battles since the beginning of this year.
Another case of cold start relying on gameplay to achieve user growth "Dark Zone Breakout", we will talk about it later.
Both cases reflect the changes in the product content of Tencent's e-sports projects.
But does this mean that Tencent is starting to have an advantage in game "content production"? I don't think it's enough, at least not enough in the field of secondary games.
In the summer file, Tencent's second-game products laid out two years ago broke out collectively. "White Night Aurora" and "Back to the Future: 1999" participated, but one was short of water, and the other fell into a huge rhythm at the beginning.
"White Night Aurora" started a price war and reduced the price of a single draw to 2 yuan, but it was far lower than the work "Honkai: Star Dome Railway", which was launched two months earlier;
"Back to the Future: 1999" used a similar charging model to "Genshin Impact" in the three tests, causing players to question, and a thousand words converged into one sentence: How dare you?
It can also be seen from this that although Tencent has changed the development of previous two games, such as "Fox Demon Little Red Lady" and "Under One Man", the "two heavy and two light" model of heavy IP, light gameplay, heavy krypton gold, and light originality, there is still a lot of room for improvement in content capabilities.
Changes in Tencent's playing style
As previously said, the methodology of Tencent's game products is: learning Xi is surpassed, and latecomers are superior.
This model is invincible in esports, but in other types of games, it will always fall into the cycle of "everything is good, the whole is not".
For example, "Dawn Awakening: Vitality", which will fire the first shot of Tencent Games in 2023.
As a photon studio, a team of more than 300 people has been developed for several years, and it is the largest product that the studio has revealed. "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" is tasked with proving the strength of Tencent Games in the "high-quality" of games.
But after the project was actually launched, it fell into the problem of most bad reviews.
Objectively speaking, "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" has many advantages in technology and graphics, especially in the sense of gunfight, with the support of Photon Studio's FPS game technology, it has a good experience. And compared with its competitor "The Day After Tomorrow", it has been optimized in many places that players complained about before, such as: the gun formula does not need to be extracted from krypton, and the seamless connection of the world and places is more in line with the requirements of SOC.
However, the core problem lies in the fact that as a post-apocalyptic survival game, many content designs are limited to local optimization, and there is no unified game production idea, such as: how to create a sense of apocalypse, how to drive players to survive, and how to let players enjoy the happiness of SOC?
The lack of immersion allows players to recognize the essence of the game's MMO for the first time, and choose bad reviews and escape.
If "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" is a game unveiled in 2020, it cannot be used as a representative of Tencent's product after the change of thinking in 2023.
So "Yuanmeng Star", as a game born in 2023 and launched in 2023, can better see what Tencent relies on at a critical moment.
The answer is still to quickly open up the ecology of all links after establishing the core gameplay, mobilize all resources to fully support and explode this category. Then give full play to the advantage of buying volume and seize the market highland.
In "Yuan Dream Star", the gameplay of "Beast Party" with its investment, the gameplay of FPS that it is good at, the gameplay of its authorized "Fall Guys", and the support of Tencent Music and Tencent Video ecology.
Including "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" has recently integrated some of the gameplay of "Dark Zone Breakout", which constitutes the core content of the game's level 120.
We need to look at Tencent's transformation objectively. From the perspective of overseas markets, another long-term development market for Tencent Games, Tencent's strategy in investment and distribution is out-and-out long-termism, and its respect for content is well-known in the industry.
However, in China, on the one hand, the Celestial Empire has its own national conditions, and the fierce competition in the external market, such as party games, cannot allow Tencent to slow down, and can only use the most effective means to seize the opportunity; on the other hand, the difficulty is also internal, and it is not easy for the elephant to turn around, and the larger the volume, the more sensitive it is. Under the real stimulation of performance bonuses, how to make employees have the original intention and be willing to spend several years of valuable workplace time to develop an innovative product, rather than enjoying a bowl of "big pot rice" in the existing path, may need more support in the distribution system.
The B side of Tencent Games
But before the change, I think Tencent's product power has been underestimated by the market for a long time.
In 2023, Tencent Games has sparked a lot of discussion due to the growth of "Dark Zone Breakout".
As a game like "Escape from Tarkov", its original work was out of the circle in the live broadcast due to its extremely high difficulty and great punishment for a single failure.
Due to the fact that the game itself has many problems such as hardcore and thresholds in terms of gameplay, many companies that try to adapt it into mobile games have failed here.
This also includes Tencent. Relatively speaking, Tencent did not give much promotional resources to this game, only one-third of the later "Dawn Awakening: Vitality".
But the game, which was launched in 2022, has grown in 2023, reaching 80 million registered users.
The development process of the number of general game users is "the peak when the server is opened, and then all the way down". Projects that do not rely on activities and achieve reverse user growth by virtue of gameplay after a period of operation are very rare cases.
But similar examples will be staged twice in 2023 in "Dark Zone Breakout" and "The Battle of the Golden Shovel".
This is enough to show that when we put aside the rich product line of Tencent Games and judge it in its advantageous areas, the product power it shows is very strong.
This is also a point that is often overlooked by players, and it is difficult to ensure the overall quality of the game due to Tencent's "big and wide" product strategy.
Just as most people will notice that Tencent has the highest number of games that have been suspended this year, few people will pay attention to the number of games it publishes.
If calculated scientifically, the average operating time of Tencent's suspended games of 945 days is far more than that of most small and medium-sized factories.
At the same time, it is important to recognize that a wide range of types of products is itself a part of product strength.
This year's popular interactive game "Finished, I'm Surrounded by Beautiful Women!", many people compare this work with the domestic "Invisible Guardian" launched in 2019, and evaluate the former is far inferior to the latter.
But in fact, this work, which laid the cornerstone of domestic interactive games, came from Tencent Games' N1 Innovation Center. Therefore, after the explosion of "It's Over, I'm Surrounded by Beautiful Girls!", Tencent is not at the starting line like other game companies, but has enough accumulation, and its more mature interactive work "Morning and Dusk Line" has long been on the online list.
Tencent's transformation in 2023 may take more time, but the lack of its product strength can only be used as an internal exhortation for Tencent, and cannot be used as a reference for external evaluation.