Source: Independent Consortium to the Sea
The CIS reported on April 18 that today Youzu Network officially announced a new round of personnel appointments: Dai Qi (Max) was appointed as the chief product officer (CPO) of Youzu, responsible for product planning and R&D project management of Youzu's self-developed system. At the same time, Wu Xi was appointed as the chief marketing officer (CMO) of Youzu, responsible for the global distribution of the company's products and user growth, both of whom report to CEO Chen Fang.
In fact, in the past three years, the dynamics of the Youzu network have received the attention and discussion of many practitioners.
However, if we look back at the three years since Youzu, under the "globalization card + strategy", the continuous emergence of new products and new content, and the further global development, the 2023 annual performance forecast disclosed at the beginning of the year was announced, the company has fully achieved a turnaround, coupled with the past dialogue between the CIS and Dai Qi and Wu Xi...... There are all kinds of signs that even in the face of many reefs and shoals, the wanderers still managed to turn the tide and get out of the haze. And this appointment may mean that Youzu has opened a new chapter.
Under the global card + route, the steady growth of product research and development strength
In April 2020, after Yoozu Network refreshed its annual revenue record, Chen Fang, CEO of Yoozu, issued an open letter to all employees of the company, stating that he would focus on his main business through a series of changes to meet the more competitive game market in the future.
One of the important and impressive changes is to improve the rank and authority of the R&D studio, and unify the first-line studio, innovation research institute, and distribution person in charge to form the Youzu management committee, so as to cultivate the team's business awareness and let more business backbones who are in the front line of the business participate in the company's operation and management.
In connection with this personnel appointment, the position of chief product officer of Youzu is none other than Max, who has served as the chief director of "Youth of the Three Kingdoms", the product producer of "Youth of the Three Kingdoms 2" and "Scarlet Echo", and the head of the youth studio.
It is understood that Dai Qi joined Youzu in 2014 and has more than 15 years of experience in game development. The "Youth of the Three Kingdoms 2" led by him has accumulated a global turnover of 3.5 billion after it was launched in 2020, and under the long-term operation of the team led by him, the "Youth of the Three Kingdoms" series of products have accumulated 10 billion turnover.
As the first self-developed and self-launched product of Youzu in the two-dimensional track, "Scarlet Echo" has refreshed Youzu's overseas achievements in Japan, Southeast Asia and other places. Especially when the product was first released in Japan, according to the estimation of a third-party data platform, it simply increased the revenue of Youzu in the same month by 57% month-on-month, making Youzu a frequent visitor to the top 30 domestic game companies going overseas.
The CIS has consulted Dai Qi on the process and thinking of developing "Scarlet Echoes" and the long-term operation of the "Young Three Kingdoms" series. Looking back on the past, he said that in the stage of "Youth of the Three Kingdoms 2", the team went through the process of "going overseas with mature products and collecting feedback from users in different overseas regions", while the positioning of "Scarlet Echo" belongs to the second stage of team development, that is, for some key areas to go overseas, self-developed products that meet the local market. ”
In this process, the studio will use structured thinking to delineate boundaries and reach consensus, and gradually accumulate R&D methodologies such as "plug and play to achieve integrated molding".
According to Dai Qi, in the stage of verifying the integration of gameplay, "plug and play" refers to the fact that when reviewing the design and follow-up planning, a certain category or a certain gameplay will be quickly introduced to try to solve online problems, and after getting verification feedback, it will be further optimized to achieve the effect of "integrated molding" of data accumulation
On the global card + track, Youzu is now accumulating the ability of self-developed products with themes and gameplay that can adapt to the issuance of various regions. As far as we can see, in the field of technology alone, Yoozu has a very fast ability to react. For example, in 2023, Youzu has publicly stated that it will set up Zhizi Lab and Red Bank Lab to make breakthroughs in the two directions of "AIGC" and "AI-empowered game globalization" respectively. As early as the beginning of 2023, Dykey revealed that as a tool to improve R&D efficiency, R&D efficiency has been greatly improved internally by promoting AI-assisted development.
On the path of global issuance, the continuous accumulation of multi-regional parallel advantages
Looking back on this change, we can find that Youzu is not only giving more room for the development of the R&D business, but also allowing the publishing team to do it, which has become an important step for Youzu to expand in the global market.
In 2021, in an open letter titled "Letter to the Highest Priority Investors (All Employees)", Chen Fang focused on the condensed and clear new strategy "Global Card +", and Youzu adjusted the issuance system architecture: breaking the original distribution line divided by region, and changing to the division standard by product or track. Under this structure, the issuance team has the opportunity to be responsible for the issuance and operation of a global region, which allows issuers that were originally limited by the region to have a greater stage to play, and also allows R&D and distribution to use global thinking and resources to do product development and distribution work more unified.
From the perspective of this strategic adjustment to this appointment, Wu Xi will undoubtedly further accelerate the globalization process of Youzu as the chief marketing officer of Youzu.
Wu Xi, who was promoted to CMO, has many years of experience in global strategic cooperation and game publishing. In 2017, Wu Xi joined Youzu and served as the head of the channel business center, advertising center and global distribution platform, during which he successfully led the release of self-developed products "Youth of the Three Kingdoms 2", "Youth of the Three Kingdoms: Zero", "Mountains and Seas Mirror Flower" - Return, "New Tomb Robbery Notes", etc., and successfully released a number of agency products, including "Brawl in the Wilderness" and "Three Kingdoms Cloud Dream".
For example, in the two-dimensional card track, "Crimson Echoes" won the first place on the App Store's free list on the first day after its launch, and "Mountains and Seas Mirror Flower" - Return also ranked among the top 2 on the iOS free list. Continuing the experience of the "Youth of the Three Kingdoms" series, the card game "Three Kingdoms Dream Cloud Record" ranked TOP1 on the App Store free list for 3 consecutive days after its launch, and has remained within the top 50 of the best-selling list for a long time.
Outside of Chinese mainland, Youzu's achievements are equally outstanding, with the most eye-catching products being "Crimson Echo" and "New Tomb Robbery Notes". After their launch in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, both of them topped the App Store & Google Play dual-platform free list, and ranked among the top 10 best-selling lists on both platforms.
At the same time, on the one hand, "Scarlet Echoes" broke through in the European and American markets and achieved good results. On the other hand, "New Tomb Raider Notes" has reached the first place on Google Play's free list in the Korean market with its excellent localized content and publicity.
"New Tomb Robbery Notes" topped the download list on the first day of its launch in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, and "Scarlet Echoes" also exceeded 3 million pre-orders in Europe and the United States
In addition, products such as "Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Zero" have outstanding performance in individual overseas markets such as Vietnam.
Behind the product is the rapid deepening of Youzu's understanding of different overseas regions, as well as the growth of multi-regional parallel and localized distribution capabilities. For example, in a past conversation, Wu Xi once talked about the differentiation of Youzu's perception of marketing effect differentiation, not to choose different resources, but how to convert users in different ways under the same resources.
For example, combined with in-depth research on the European and American markets, "Scarlet Echoes" changed its publicity strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, adjusted its highly customized publicity content, and carried out online charter marketing on major animation stations and ACG communities in Europe and the United States. As a well-known IP adaptation game in China, the marketing and packaging ideas of "New Tomb Robbery Notes" have changed from "tomb robbery" to "archaeological treasure exploration", and the promotion strategy has also increased investment at the brand level, which has finally made the product achieve good results in South Korea.
It is this kind of multi-theme vertical and multi-regional product breakthrough that has allowed Youzu to have a concentrated growth in the global distribution ability of its products in the past year, which was reflected in the semi-annual performance report disclosed by Youzu in 2023, when Youzu's overseas revenue accounted for 65.26% of the total revenue. Under this figure, in fact, the overseas income of Youzu has exceeded the domestic market for 8 consecutive years, and the advantages of product globalization have been extremely obvious.
epilogue
At this point today, looking back on the past process, you will find that Youzu has initially tasted the fruits of change.
On the one hand, from the perspective of actual performance, according to the 2023 annual performance forecast disclosed by Youzu Network, Youzu Network is expected to achieve a net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies of 80 million yuan to 120 million yuan in 2023, and a net profit of 50 million yuan to 75 million yuan after deducting non-recurring profits and losses. This means that Youzu has not only completely turned losses into profits, but also significantly improved its profitability.
On the other hand, from the perspective of long-term development, more importantly, with the transformation of the business, the precipitation of elites such as Dai Qi and Wu Xi who are fighting in the front line of the business, improve the core strength of the management team in order to hedge the risks caused by market and product uncertainty, and make it more durable and resistant to walk on the route of global card +.
However, the ambition of Youzu is not limited to this, whether it is the R&D side or the distribution side, they are simultaneously and rapidly expanding the business boundary, and this rapid iteration has achieved a top-down, extremely high degree of unity, and even the top core management is self-iterating.
In past conversations, Dyche has confessed to the CIS that he wants to keep the team in a "fighting mode" at all times, and the most important thing for the team is to "not leave the battlefield" and "go to a bigger battlefield".
Under this line of thinking, Youzu will have a number of new products planned to be released. For example, the latest masterpiece of the juvenile series, the national tide punk card RPG "Youth Journey to the West 2" is scheduled to be launched in mainland China on April 30. As a series of juvenile products launched by Youzu after three years, the number of game omni-channel reservations has exceeded 5 million.
Juvenile Journey to the West 2
At the same time, in a recent dialogue, Wu Xi also told us that in the global competition of the industry, the stage of competition is nearing the end, and the next stage will test who can take the lead in building a moat for global distribution. In this regard, Youzu will take two steps, on the one hand, to make continuous investment in the integration of quality and efficiency, and on the other hand, to achieve labeling in the organizational structure, and set up corresponding experts in a more subdivided manner.
According to this trend, Yoozu should maintain a rapid development momentum for a period of time in the future, building a stronger advantage barrier while building a larger game content ecology through self-iteration. And now, perhaps no one will question the strength of the team on the road to globalization.