Source | What's new in the game
Author | eel
Junhai Network seems to be still in the throes of transformation.
In the early days, Junhai Network consolidated its market position with Xianxia RPGs and purchases, and gradually adjusted the proportion of self-developed and agent games from 2019. During this period, some products that are not so much like South China buying game companies have been launched, such as SLG "Ant Clan Rise" and TPS "Guild Wars Yarat". But business transformation wasn't as successful as it could have been.
Some time ago, Wolong Real Estate announced its 2023 annual report. According to the report, Junhai Network's revenue fell slightly to 1.021 billion yuan during the reporting period, and its profit fell by 351.02% year-on-year, with a loss of 65 million yuan. In the first two years, Junhai Games once experienced revenue growth and reversed losses, and now it is once again stuck in a business bottleneck.
Self-research revenue fell by 53%, and the medium to heavy began to look for another direction
Junhai Network has long implemented the tilt towards self-developed business, but this process is not a sharp turn.
At least from the perspective of R&D expenses, Junhai Network did not choose to maintain stable investment, but gradually narrowed. Its R&D expenses from 2020 to 2023 are 153 million yuan, 105 million yuan, 98.53 million yuan and 65.81 million yuan respectively.
At the end of 2023, the organizational structure of Junhai Network has shrunk. From this, it can be felt that the weight of self-developed products is not as high as before - Yalat Distribution Center, Yalat Distribution Group, Ant Design Center, and Ant Market Center have all been abolished from the organizational structure. Instead, a new market center and a buy design center were added to the structure, and the teams related to the presumably self-developed project were reintegrated.
The representative work of Junhai Network's transformation is SLG's "Rise of the Ant Clan", which was developed by its Cheetah Studio. This game has been in development for two years since 2019, and in 2021, Xinghe Mutual Entertainment's "Little Ant Country" became a dark horse to go to sea, and "Ant Clan Rise", which is also an ant theme, was officially launched in the same year. "Ant Clan Rise" refers to the design of COC at the gameplay level, and is based on a mature framework with novel packaging.
In 2021, "Rise of the Ant Clan" will be launched in the domestic market. The game received 60 million yuan in turnover in the following month, and more than 70 million yuan in the whole year. The game's real success came after the first anniversary of its launch, when it climbed back to the top 100 and hit a new high on the iOS best-selling list.
Originally, "The Rise of the Ant Clan" was still pinned on high hopes to open up overseas markets, but the decline in early results was more serious. In April 2022, the game was released by Tianyou in the traditional Chinese version, and it ranked 26th on the Hong Kong iOS best-selling list, and fell outside the top 100 in more than a month. In October of the same year, Junhai Network independently released the overseas version of the Southeast Asian, Japanese and Korean markets, and the performance was relatively average.
Judging from the domestic version, the results of "Rise of the Ant Clan" have been declining. Junhai Network said in the announcement that "The Rise of the Ant Clan" had poor promotion effect and the loss of old users last year, which was the main reason for the decline in self-research income.
For this game, Junhai Network plans to continue to tap the residual value on the mini game platform.
As of last year, Junhai Network has not completely abandoned the packaging of "ants". In 2023, Junhai Network also tested the ant-themed mini-game "Ant Adventure". The game uses a light RTS-like operation, and the image of ants is more realistic.
The characters in "The Rise of the Ant Clan" tend to be anthropomorphic, and only realistic ant images will appear in high-efficiency buying materials. "Ant Adventure" is equivalent to providing a possibility of playing ads, and the vertical screen operation is also very suitable for the operation habits of young gamers. If you are interested in bringing back the vitality of "Ant Rise" on the mini-game platform, "Ant Adventure" may be able to pave the way for it.
Ant Adventure
Compared with the ups and downs of "The Rise of the Ant Clan", MOBA+TPS "Fierce Battle of Yarat" was dumb from the beginning.
"Guild Wars of Yarat" was developed by Falcon Studios of its Shenzhen branch. The gameplay of MOBA+TPS is similar to the heart-warming "Fire Soda", and "Guild Wars Yarat" was released and launched 3 months earlier. As a result, both games did not perform well in the domestic market, with Guild Wars Yarat falling outside the top 100 on the iOS best-selling list within a week of its launch.
In the subsequent tuning process, the ideas of the two games are also slightly different. Firepower Soda is still focused on the shooter experience, with a new mode of Jedi Brawl in the new season, while Guild Wars Arat is more casual with the addition of parkour gameplay and Who's the Joker (who is undercover) mode in Season 2, and the addition of a Workshop in Season 3.
It seems that "Guild Wars Yarat" seems to have been inspired by "Egg Boy Party", and may have had the idea of going in the direction of a big DAU. However, the product performance has never improved, and it was finally removed from the shelves in November of the same year, with less than a year of operation. Originally, Guild Wars Arat was tested overseas, but there has been no follow-up.
Guild Wars Arat
These two medium-heavy games have been taken seriously, and it is already a relatively good result to be able to go online. Junhai Network also planned to try to develop its own card products, and the placement card "Margin of Destiny" will be released in advance in 2021, with an annual turnover of more than 4 million yuan. "Margin of Destiny" opened pre-orders for the iOS version in 2022, but it was removed from the shelves in the same year. The planned sequel "Margin of Destiny 2" has not been revealed, and basically the self-developed products of this series have been lost.
In the case that most of the self-developed products have failed, the revenue of Junhai Network's self-developed games will decrease by 52.42% year-on-year in 2023.
At the same time, Junhai Network sees new opportunities in the most familiar buying agent products. Last year, Junhai Network's agency game revenue increased by 20.68% year-on-year, mainly due to the increase in self-purchase revenue of "The Book of Mountains and Seas".
"The Record of Mountains and Seas and Strange Beasts" is a typical buy-volume style game, which is in the field of Junhai Network. In August 2020, "The Record of Strange Beasts in the Classic of Mountains and Seas" was launched, and Junhai Network participated in the distribution in the form of multi-party intermodal transportation. The turnover of this game was close to 240 million yuan in the four months of that year, and more than 1.2 billion yuan in the following year, and the turnover increased driven by the purchase volume.
The long-term operation of "The Record of Mountains and Seas and Strange Beasts" is inseparable from the mini-game platform. According to public information, in 2021, "The Record of Strange Beasts in the Classic of Mountains and Seas" has appeared on the best-selling list of WeChat mini games as a heavy mini game. The gravitational engine shows that at present, this game is still in the TOP100 of the list, and it is a relatively long-term purchase product of Junhai Network.
Junhai Network also intended to replicate the success of this product. In 2023, Junhai Network will release the customized agency product "Fantasy of the Classic of Mountains and Seas", which is not as effective as the company expected. Although not every shot must be hit, this still points out a direction for Junhai Network.
According to the company's announcement, in the future, Junhai Network plans to enter the mini game market through the accumulation of mature game projects and self-developed game projects, and the new development of small game products, so as to improve profitability. If Junhai Network can seize the opportunity of mini games at the level of self-development, it may be able to squeeze out profits while shortening the R&D cycle and reducing R&D costs.
Join the wave of mini games and strive to win with "micro-innovation".
Now Junhai Network has not only laid out a large number of products such as "The Record of Strange Beasts of Mountains and Seas", but also has not left behind the popular gameplay on the market, including salted fish like, adventure battle like, box opening, etc.
Junhai Network has mentioned its future development strategy, which includes "micro-innovation on the basis of mature bottoms such as placing cards like and salted fish king likes". At present, Junhai Network has launched 6 WeChat mini games, and wants to explore potential opportunities in subdivided categories.
The most tried type of gameplay at the moment is salted fish like. The art packaging of the three products has obvious differences, which can tap potential users in different directions.
"Yi Nian Xian Fan" chooses the theme of cultivating immortals, and its art style tends to be relatively new immortal cultivation games such as "Yi Nian Yao", which is estimated to be more attractive to young users.
In addition to the art packaging, "Yi Nian Xianfan" has also made some adjustments at the operational level. For example, the game sacrifices the length of the battle screen and puts the function of character upgrading into the main interface, so that players no longer need to switch frequently between the main interface and the development interface. This prompts players to pay more attention to card development rather than manual operation, highlighting the placement of gameplay.
This up-and-down UI layout is somewhat similar to "Adventure Wars", probably inspired by the hit.
The packaging of "Sky Forest" is very similar to 4399's salted fish like "Hero Hello Dog". Both use a high-brightness color style, and the characters have spoof elements. For example, "Sky Forest" is based on DOGE, Hulk, Mona Lisa, Wu Song and other images and carries out secondary creation, and the product tonality is mainly relaxed and witty.
Last year, "Hello Dog Hero" has already proven the viability of this style of packaging in overseas markets, and it is on par with "King of Salted Fish" in the Hong Kong market, and even better in the Taiwan and South Korean markets. In the domestic market, this packaging has not entered the eyes of the public.
"The Pocket Classic of Mountains and Seas" is an extension of the theme of "The Classic of Mountains and Seas". The game adopts the traditional Xianxia packaging, changing the unboxing to hatching alien eggs, making fashions, mounts, wings and other content for the protagonist, with the flavor of Xianxia MMO in all aspects. It is estimated that Junhai Network is most familiar with the audience of this theme.
Including salted fish like, Junhai Network tried relatively early explosive gameplay, and wanted to try to make some characteristics.
"Lingyunji" is currently the main mini-game new product of Junhai Network. This game has landed in the overseas APP game market since last year, and has been launched under the names of "Jianghu Idle Man" and "Daxia You Are Super Brave", which is estimated to be trying the effect of different promotional materials.
"Lingyun" basically adopts the slime-like gameplay framework, and makes some adjustments in combination with the martial arts theme. The game has added a qi training function, and as players upgrade their attributes, advance levels, and complete tasks, they can naturally break through the realm. In this way, the game's attribute values of the characters expand rapidly, and the refreshing feeling brought by the values is more emphasized.
A design similar to "Realm Breakthrough" is more common in popular gameplay adventure battle likes, and "Lingyun" emphasizes it after application. Extracting the highlights from the newer popular products, feeding back and optimizing the basic gameplay may also be an idea for tuning.
"Adventure" directly collides with "Adventure Battle", and the gameplay design of the two games is more similar, and it also combines slime like and case opening gameplay. It is also worth noting that the art style of "Adventure" is very similar to "Lingyun", using the themes of Journey to the West and Dark Martial Arts respectively, perhaps this kind of packaging has a good absorption effect.
"Perfect Star Range" is currently the most differentiated mini-game under Junhai Network. It is a combination of box-opening gameplay and female-oriented costume changing gameplay, and there are also otome game elements in the main story. From the perspective of positioning, "Perfect Star Range" not only wants to cover the female player group, but also wants to cover as comprehensively as possible.
In addition, Junhai Network is preparing to launch some of its old products into mini program versions, including "Xuanyuan Tribulation", "Zhan Linglong 2" and the above-mentioned "Rise of the Ant Clan". Among them, "Battle Linglong 2" has used "0.1% off" as a publicity gimmick in the promotion process, which was once a routine for some mini game products to emerge. Combined with the company structure revealed by Junhai Network this year, the innovation business group has a BT product group and a BT operation group, which may be preparing for this.
epilogue
In the past few years, Junhai Network fell into the dilemma of buying volume, and its annual profit fell from hundreds of millions of yuan in the past to tens of millions of yuan. In order to save costs during the transformation period, the company also moved from office buildings in prosperous areas to more cost-effective creative parks. This year, after adjusting the development strategy, like many other manufacturers, they chose to bet on mini games, and the new business, including SLG, may gradually be put down.
The new round of industry reshuffle can be stopped, and it is estimated that it will be clear in two or three years.