Produced by Tiger Sniff Commercial Consumer Group
Author|Huang Qingchun
Title picture: Stills from "God of Gamblers".
After a period of difficult confusion on the Internet, new outlets have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain - mini games (no need to download an App, "parasitic" in the WeChat and Douyin mini program ecology) are becoming a new territory for bytes and WeChat staking ground.
At the beginning of April, Douyin announced the release of Mini Games: developers can receive 90% of total Android spend and 5% of total Android ad credit incentives, subject to the following conditions:
- Access to the "Recommended Page Game Card" (exempted if the developer is not within the scope of capability exposure), "Add Mobile Desktop Shortcut" and "Search Keyword Configuration" capabilities;
- The average DAU (daily active users) penetration rate of the "homepage sidebar revisit capability" in the current billing cycle is >15% (the waiver period is within 30 calendar days from the date when the game is connected to this capability, and the settlement cycle in which the waiver period is located is deemed to meet this condition by default);
- Activate other platform requirements and complete the corresponding platform process, including signing relevant agreements.
There is no shortage of industry insiders who believe that Douyin's move is calling for WeChat's mini game growth incentive plan launched in March, but WeChat's advertising incentives for developers at that time were only 40%, and this part of the incentive advertising funds can only be used for Tencent advertising.
Therefore, compared with WeChat's concessions, it is obvious that Douyin is more determined to grab the "cake" of the mini game.
Data source: DataEye calculations
Tiger Sniff learned that with the advantages of changeable themes, low development thresholds, and short R&D and launch cycles, mini games have not only attracted Tencent (for example, "Yuanmeng Star" is an App, WeChat mini games, and cloud games are distributed at multiple ends), NetEase ("Fantasy Westward Journey Web Version" and "Westward Journey: Return" are all online WeChat mini games) continue to increase, and game manufacturers such as Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Century Huatong, Perfect World, Palm Fun Technology, Kaiying Network, and Thunder Games are also actively deploying.
As players from all walks of life enter the game, the entire mini-game ecology is becoming more and more popular.
An industry researcher told Tiger Sniff that the outbreak of mini games in the past two years is inseparable from the penetration and traffic filling of head apps such as WeChat and Douyin, and the growth curve will become steeper and steeper in the future—after all, mini games are still in a dividend period of low investment, large user increment, and low-price purchase (the number of advertisements placed on various channels).
"With the influx of more mini game manufacturers and developers into the track, hot money, talents and resources will flow in together, and the plate of mini games will exceed 30 billion yuan in 2023, and it is expected to reach 500-60 billion yuan this year, and it will continue to rise in the medium and long term. The person said.
Douyin WeChat, meet on a narrow road
Many people may ask: Chaoxi Lightyear (Byte Game Division) only carried out large-scale business contraction in November last year, why did Douyin come to play games with WeChat volume again?
First of all, games are Douyin's high-premium traffic, and mini games can convert platform game users and potential users who are not exposed to games, supporting a large enough user base.
Take the official data of the WeChat Open Class - Mini Game Developer Conference in June 2023 as an example: in 2023, the total number of Mini Game users will exceed 1 billion, the number of MAU (monthly active users) will exceed 400 million, the cumulative number of developers will be nearly 400,000, more than 70 team products will reach the scale of millions of daily active users, and more than 100 teams will have a quarterly turnover of more than 10 million - even though the data climbing curve of the Mini Game track is amazing, the number of WeChat users in the same period will be 1.3 billion, the MAU of Mini Programs will exceed 1.1 billion, and the WeChat user penetration rate of Mini Games will only be 30% , the follow-up growth space is huge.
Secondly, the business scene of mini games is more sinking.
According to the form of monetization, Mini Games can be divided into three categories: IAP (in-app purchase payment, including game prop sales, level payment, etc.), IAA (advertising monetization), and IAP + IAA (hybrid monetization);
According to DataEye data, the R&D cycle and cost of Mini Games can be reduced by at least 50% compared with mobile apps, focusing on game categories, taking Xianxia RPG as an example, independent apps often require several years of R&D cycle, while a Xianxia Mini Game may only take a few months from project initiation to launch, and H5 version compatibility can even be shortened to 3-4 months.
In addition, the profit margin of Mini Games is generally higher than that of App-side games, providing higher profit margins and cost-effectiveness for small and medium-sized manufacturers, which is mainly due to three aspects:
- R&D investment is lightweight, reducing costs;
- Higher purchase efficiency and high conversion rate (industry insiders estimate that the conversion rate of in-app purchases is 2-3 times that of app games);
- The commission of the mini game platform is obviously lower than that of the traditional channel for app games.
In addition, IAA Mini Games are not restricted by the system/platform, and are more suitable for the landing of lightweight products with cross-platform layout (lower threshold and more controllable risks) - the current APP games often have several G installation packages, and there are generally first-time login loading packages, while Mini Games are click-to-play and do not need to be downloaded, which is easy to use and adapts to more scenarios.
In particular, mini games driven by social gameplay have strong user stickiness, which is a "sharp weapon" to grab users' attention and pull the product duration.
In fact, reviewing WeChat's layout in the mini game ecology can be traced back to five years ago - on December 28, 2017, Tencent added a "Hop a Hop" mini game to the WeChat 6.0 version of the Mini Program.
Everyone knows what happened later - backed by WeChat's traffic dividend, the results of "Hop a Hop" are a blockbuster: according to the data revealed by WeChat officials at the time, the cumulative number of users of WeChat Mini Games reached 310 million in the 20 days after it was launched, among them, the most popular "Hop Hop" retained 52% in seven days, and finally its DAU exceeded 100 million.
In the face of such gratifying data, WeChat changed its restraint on commercialization in the past and quickly promoted the commercialization of "Hop a Hop".
Soon after the launch of "Hop a Jump", the media revealed that it advertised according to CPD (Cost Per Day, calculated by day), and the price was very expensive (at that time, the media revealed that the price was 5 million a day, 10 million for two days, and 20 million for five days, and did not promise exclusivity);
Pulling the attention back to Douyin, it has previously become popular with popular mini-games such as "Eliminate the Virus", "National Drift", "My Little Home", etc., largely because this kind of short, flat and fast "consumable content (mini games)" is just suitable for Douyin's entertainment traffic:
- On the one hand, in recent years, the demand for focused, fragmented, and personalized entertainment has surged, which has provided the soil for the savage growth of short videos and mini games, and Douyin mini programs have large traffic and low content consumption thresholds, which are more suitable for fragmented entertainment methods.
Even, users are addicted to the "coolness" of instant feedback, and the convenience of playing mini games at any time makes the user penetration rate and interactivity extremely high, which helps the platform increase the user's use time by enhancing the user's time consumption in the game field.
More than 70% of Mini Game users are playing more than two Mini Games at the same time, and nearly 40% of users play more than 1 hour a day.
- On the other hand, users' content preferences and entertainment habits are changing—when the competition between work and life is becoming more and more "involuted", they are willing to sacrifice some experiences in exchange for more convenient entertainment methods to obtain emotional value, and easy-to-use mini games have undoubtedly successfully completed the "domestication" of new entertainment methods.
The reason why it is called a new entertainment method is that Mini Game users prefer casual games, pay more attention to the convenience of games, and tend to play in fragmented time, while App game users prefer to play MOBA, shooting, and role-playing games, and pay more attention to game quality and experience, and tend to play games for a longer full period (more than 20 minutes).
In addition, Tiger Sniff obtained third-party survey data showing that Mini Program games are more attractive to middle-aged groups aged 18-40, with a higher proportion in new first-tier and second- and third-tier cities;
Of course, the deep-seated reason is that unlike traditional game projects, the long production cycle and high investment of traditional game projects, the business model of IAA Mini Games is mainly advertising monetization, and it is more about tapping new markets in the industry rather than grabbing the independent app market - which makes popular mini games break the boundaries of apps and grow across platforms.
For example, Tencent executives said on the 2023Q4 earnings call that "we don't see any cannibalization between Mini Games and App games at the moment, and some Mini Game paying users (well above 10%) are also app-based paying users." ”
To sum up, it is not difficult to understand why Douyin is willing to grit its teeth and give up 90% of the total Android consumption and the advertising incentive equivalent to 5% of the total Android consumption - this move is to complete the strategic card position, make the platform the first position of more mini games, and then bind more high-quality manufacturers.
Small games, not to be underestimated
Regardless of whether you are a mini game audience or not, don't underestimate its huge potential energy - "Sheep is a Sheep" in 2022 and "The King of Salted Fish" in 2023 rely on WeChat's huge social relationship chain, and the popularity quickly radiates to Douyin, Weibo, Station B, Xiaohongshu, and swept the current mainstream social platforms.
A game producer described the popularity of these two mini-games as magical, "neither of them is original gameplay, and even the quality is a little rough, but I have to admire their penetration (popularity) and commercial success."
Let's talk about the gameplay first.
Nowadays, the entire industry has evolved from the idea of forwarding rewards \ social fission in "Sheep is a Sheep" to a new stage of social fission + purchase driven by "The King of Salted Fish"; moreover, with the release of industry dividends and the entry of developers, the gameplay types of mini games are also constantly enriched, diversified, and continuously innovated in categories - the sales list of mini games in March 2024 alone covers many topics such as cultivating immortals, history, Zhiwei, and farming.
Previously, at the end of March (the ranking was based on 18 o'clock data on March 25), the "Game Daily" sorted out the top 10 products on the WeChat Mini Game best-selling list, and the biggest winners were Sanqi Mutual Entertainment and Haoteng Jiake:
- Sanqi Mutual Entertainment's "Seeking the Way" will always occupy the top of the best-selling list in 2024, and its "Spirit Sword Immortal Master" (No. 3 on the best-selling list), "The Nameless" (No. 4 on the best-selling list), and "Soul Prologue" (No. 13 on the best-selling list) also show full stamina;
- Howteng Jiake's "King of Salted Fish" (No. 6 on the best-selling list) has been strong since 2023, and its "Crazy Knights", "Dao Tianlu" and "Fat Goose Gym" also have good potential.
In addition to the above two, the top 10 best-selling lists also include 99 Interactive's "Heroes of Hundred Refinements" (No. 2 on the best-selling list), "Shooting at Zombies" (No. 5 on the best-selling list), "This City Has Good Fields" (No. 7 on the best-selling list), "The Legend of Xianxia: A New Beginning" (No. 8 on the best-selling list) and "Adventure Operations" (No. 10 on the best-selling list) by 4399.
If you try the above mini games, you will find that the fierce competition on the best-selling list has made the gameplay of the mini games iterate rapidly - from the classic casual gameplay such as "Sheep is a Sheep" two years ago, it has been continuously expanded to synthetic gameplay, medium and heavy multi-gameplay, etc., and the product quality has also been continuously improved.
The commercial value of the mini game should not be underestimated.
Taking the popular "Sheep a Sheep" in 2022 as an example, its founder Zhang Jiaxu once revealed that the half-year revenue of this small game, which costs only 500,000 yuan, exceeded 100 million yuan.
Taking the popular "King of Salted Fish" in 2023 as an example, industry insiders extrapolate backwards according to the scale of purchases, and the monthly turnover of "King of Salted Fish" at the beginning of 2023 will exceed 100 million yuan, and previous QuestMobile data also shows that the MAU of the "King of Salted Fish" WeChat mini game in June 2023 is close to 120 million, and the average monthly ARPU (average revenue per user) is expected to be 2.4-3.2 yuan.
This potential energy is not a flash in the pan of individual products, you must know that "Crazy Knights" and "Seeking the Way" are also products with an estimated monthly turnover of more than 100 million yuan in the industry in 2023;
In view of this, major game manufacturers have not hesitated to write mini games into their financial reports:
- In the 2023Q3 quarterly earnings call, Tencent's management regarded Mini Games as "a platform opportunity", and mentioned in the 2023 annual financial report that the total turnover of Mini Games increased by more than 50%;
- CMGE disclosed that in 2023, the Mini Game business will bring more than 600 million yuan of revenue to the Group, and the Mini Game business has become a new business growth point for CMGE.
- In the 2023 annual performance forecast, Palmfun Technology said that the company is actively laying out the mini game track;
- FriendTimes said in its financial report that a number of WeChat mini games have been progressing smoothly recently, and the monthly turnover has exceeded 10 million.
In addition, the channel advantages of Mini Games are also reflected in cross-platform traffic access and advertising promotion.
For example, Douyin gradually opened the external links of WeChat Mini Games last year, and the Douyin live broadcast room also began to have related promotions of WeChat Mini Games, connecting WeChat and Douyin, the two largest traffic islands on the market, to bring more traffic to Mini Games.
Moreover, after the Mini Game becomes a linker between Douyin and WeChat, both parties can unleash more traffic and advertising promotion opportunities - according to Tencent Advertising, in 2022, the turnover of Mini Games for purchase and monetization increased by more than 100% year-on-year, and the turnover of Mini Games for ad monetization increased by more than 40% year-on-year.
It is worth mentioning that some practitioners told Tiger Sniff that in contrast, the commercialization of WeChat mini games is more active, "WeChat can provide multiple scenarios + monetization capabilities + favorable policy combinations, advertising + WeChat ecological multi-scene drainage", and further predicted that "the growth rate of WeChat mini games in 2024 may exceed that of Douyin mini games".
The above argument is not unreasonable: Tencent Advertising has launched a treasure chest of IAP mini game delivery tools to help advertisers better promote, and WeChat has also launched playable rewarded ads, community gift package interaction, automated ad delivery, long-term ROI bidding tools, and video account mini-tasks, etc., to continue to open up new advertising scenarios for mini games.
In this regard, a person close to Douyin told Tiger Sniff that the mini game is still in the incremental release stage. "Although Byte is shrinking its investment in the game business, the industry sees that the rapid growth of mini games may stimulate Douyin to further strengthen cooperation with WeChat. ”
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