Last night, Dark Horse was enjoying a long-lost night activity at home, and his brother, who had been absent for three months, suddenly sent a message to Dark Horse:
"Dude, are you going to go black?"
You may not know, although the dark horse boasts of being a seven-foot man, but his talent is limited, and he has no chance with tower defense games since he was a child.
"XX party, and I will deal with them, hurry up with three missing one. ”
……
For a moment, the dark horse remembered the fear of being dominated by a certain two games for the entire Spring Festival holiday-
Source: Internet
They're not going to be "wrestling", are they!?
"Yuan Egg War" halftime break?
I don't know some time ago, when you were surfing the Internet, did you be "caught off guard" by the overwhelming publicity and the pervasive Hiroko, anyway, the dark horse is really memorable.
Since December last year, as soon as Dark Horse opens the social software, he will definitely be able to see a "genuine family carnival mobile game" appear on the launch interface.
Screenshot of Weibo
According to data, as of December 14, the official website of "Yuan Dream Star", which represents Tencent, shows that the number of game pre-orders has exceeded 50 million, and "Egg Boy Party", which represented NetEase at that time, has already announced that its daily active users have exceeded 100 million!
To what extent is the battle between the two families fierce? At that time, any content about these two games that you clicked on was either wide from this one or wide from that one, and the main theme was that one refused precision marketing and only relied on flooding.
Screenshot of a WeChat public account
It is understood that the goose factory announced that the marketing investment reached 1.4 billion yuan, and the pig factory also said that it would spend 500 million yuan as a creative incentive in two years, and it also logged in on December 15 (Yuanmeng public beta) to send skins.
In more than three months, the two factories of Pig and Goose have contributed to the "unpretentious" business war for the audience again and again (please poke for details: criticized by the name of People's Daily Online!The "happy hometown" of 500 million users was almost ended by Tencent!)
When it came to the Spring Festival "decisive battle at the top of the light", the goose factory accidentally used the "spelling Xixi operation" to dry its own score to 1.0 points (requiring users to obtain activity skins by inviting friends), and the pig factory liked to lie down and win.
Diandian data shows that from December 15th to January 15th, on the iOS side, the total revenue of "Yuan Dream Star" was 138 million yuan, and the data was unbeatable in the new game, while the total revenue of "Egg Boy Party" in the same period was about 110 million yuan.
However, as of February 15, 2024, the total revenue of "Egg Boy Party" in the Chinese App Store in the past 30 days is about 144 million yuan, while the total revenue of "Yuan Dream Star" is about 61.55 million yuan, which is more than half of NetEase.
Source: Dotted data
At the same time, the two companies have also announced their financial reports for 2023. NetEase's gaming revenue in 2023 increased by 9.4% year-on-year to RMB81.6 billion, while Tencent's online game revenue in 2023 increased by 5.4% year-on-year to RMB179.9 billion. However, Tencent's online game revenue in the fourth quarter was 40.9 billion, down 2% year-on-year.
How to say it, just like Brother Xiao Ma mentioned at Tencent's annual meeting in January:
Source: Little Red Book
Although the social attribute of the party game is the comfort zone of Tencent's games, although Tencent is still mobilizing the whole ecology to build momentum for the "prince", Tencent, which has lost its first-mover advantage, has not been able to pry the basic disk on the opposite side - the player community this time.
"Yuan Dream Star", which was pinned on by the goose factory, has invested a lot of money in the past two months, but in the end it seems to be a bad move.
The dark horse pondered, this life-and-death wrestling should end here......
Who knew that the brother woke up the dreamer with a sentence: "The pig and goose have been torn for so many years, and this is the end?" ”
Grievances and hatreds in those years
Don't look at the goose factory this time, it seems to be planted, but you have to count it carefully, no one has been pleasing to each other for so many years.
Take the MMORPG market that Tencent has been thinking about for more than ten years:
In the early years, NetEase firmly established its position as the big brother in the domestic MMORPG market through "Fantasy Journey to the West" and "World of Warcraft", while Tencent did a good job in the field of casual games such as Dou Landlord and QQ Tang.
The pig factory launched two independent 3D online games, "World 3" and "A Chinese Ghost Story", and the goose factory acted as an agent for "Crossfire" and "Dungeon Warriors", and also made the legendary mobile game "League of Legends", everyone has a bright future.
Source: Weibo
It wasn't until 2016 that Tencent finally started with MMORPG, launching the famous "Tianya Moon Knife" and NetEase's head-to-head head-to-head; NetEase was not to be outdone, and launched the competing product "Against the Cold" in 2018, and by the way, it also used the MOBA game "Decisive Battle! Heianjing" with Onmyoji IP to add a block to "Glory of Kings".
Source: Internet
It's a back and forth, so unhappy.
But these can only be called appetizers.
We all know that when the market volume reaches the level of pigs and geese, the small friction will definitely not stop, but if you really want to let the strength of the positive tear each other and throw money to grab the market, large factories will generally not be so young considering the return on investment ratio.
Therefore, the last time the two factories were tough and tough, it was back to the chicken "battle royale" jointly performed by the two companies in 2018.
In the second half of 2017, NetEase decided to drag the family to develop a chicken game, and in November, "Wilderness Action" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" were launched.
This familiar trick took the lead, which made "Wilderness Action" highly praised as soon as it was released.
Source: Wilderness Action
The pig does not leave the goose, the goose does not leave the pig, and the next thing that arrived at the scene was Tencent, which announced the official agent operation of the national server of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds".
Three months later, in February 2018, the goose factory launched the "Exciting Battlefield" and "Wilderness Action" confrontation, although the time was 3 months late, but the goose factory has its own "money ability", through the acquisition of "PUBG" parent company Blue Hole + Tencent social traffic fission, Tencent quickly snatched a large number of users from the hands of Wilderness Action.
Source: Mobile game that little thing
Bah, "Wilderness Action" can't be picked off even if it is fanned against the wall.
And the most annoying thing is that the above operations all happened without getting the version number from each other.
Due to the tight time and heavy tasks, the goose factory did not hesitate to endure the humiliation and choose the method of "free internal test" to operate the exciting battlefield for six seasons, until May 2019, when the filthy soil was reincarnated as "Peace Elite" and re-launched.
Source: Peace Elite
When the time comes to 2023, the Goose Factory Sniper Egg Boy Party will be regarded by many netizens as a spiritual sequel to the "Chicken War".
Young people don't play games anymore?
At this point in the story, I don't know if anyone has found a problem, in the early years, the two factories of pigs and geese competed, either a gunfight FPS game, or a classic MMORPG, anyway, at least it was still for adults to play.
But in 2023, the battlefield of the two factories competing against each other has actually run to a "sub-supply" game (not saying that party games are not all-age).
What's going on? Young people don't play games?
If you look at the overall game market, games are indeed starting to become more and more "brainless", and casual puzzle games are appearing more and more.
Source: WeChat Mini Program
Among the 1,161 game editions that have passed the review in 2023, there are a total of 194 mobile casual puzzle versions, accounting for 16.7%, compared to 10.4% in 2022, and only 529 versions have passed the review in 2022.
The main reason for this situation is the intensification of the Matthew effect: popular games such as "Honor of Kings" and "PUBG Mobile" are still the most profitable top games, but at the same time, players are also starting to get tired of the cookie-cutter gameplay, so in the face of the shrinking market, more and more manufacturers have begun to transform into casual puzzle games.
And the two-dimensional game, which was a smash hit a few years ago, will also decline rapidly in 2023, which can be seen from the sad and tearful financial report of station B.
Source: Tiger Sniff
So throughout 2023, except for the thunderous games, we don't seem to have heard of any new games appearing again.
However, in the view of Dark Horse, the cold market environment can only be regarded as an external cause, and the fundamental reason is that-
The group of people who should play the game have been "rolled" to the point of "playing" unintentionally......
According to figures disclosed by Tencent in June last year, the monthly active users of WeChat Mini Games have exceeded 400 million.
With the passage of time, former gamers have entered the society, facing anxiety and high intensity 996, just imagine, when countless days off are forced to be on call at any time, when family and life occupy all our time, how many people can sit in front of the computer for an afternoon to play games?
Source: Zhihu users
In addition, as fragmented products such as short videos continue to invade life, mechanical repetitive actions can bring dopamine pleasure, and gamers have lost the passion to use their brains to play games, and they have also lost the whole afternoon time they used to play games.
Write at the end
Excessively anxious young people seek temporary peace in casual games, and finally find a new way of self-consistency in this game world that can be withdrawn at any time.
But sometimes we can't help but feel nostalgic for the past:
How long has it been since you spent a few hours playing tower defense with friends for an afternoon?