Recently, I talked to friends in the circle about the market trend, and "the weakness of heavy games" seems to have become a small consensus.
Compared with previous years, it is possible to expand the user base of various categories and capture a group of highly sticky players with in-depth gameplay, in today's "winner takes all", products that have been polished for several years are likely to end up with a "one-day trip to the leaderboard" and then no splash as soon as they are launched. For developers, the cost of R&D and publicity is increasing, making people a little "unable to do", and for players with limited time and budget, everyone is becoming more and more "unable to play".
On the other hand, the popularity of party games and the prosperity of mini-games show the attractiveness of lightweight products to users.
Lightweight but creative and interesting products are gathering new user voices and are quite vibrant. Under such a trend, many developers are also actively changing their thinking and beginning to pay attention to whether they can open up the situation with "small but fine" products.
The problem now is that there is still one last driver behind the trend of lightweight games - better development tools and community support. However, judging from the author's recent observations and exchanges, this key to unlocking possibilities has come to us.
R&D pain points of "creative lightweight games".
In fact, for many developers, the pursuit of interesting small-scale products has always been an area they want to cultivate.
However, on the one hand, it is difficult to get through the market path, whether it is a small game or a stand-alone buyout system, and teams that lack sufficient experience cannot make their ideas receive sufficient market feedback; on the other hand, it is often difficult for many teams or individuals who lack accumulation in the technical dimension to smoothly transform their ideas into working product prototypes, to seek investment and harvest user testing.
The obvious problem is that although lightweight products focus on creative presentation, they still need sufficient polishing of art resources and technical strength to achieve "small but fine" works.
Judging from the situation of the small teams and individual developers that the game Gyro has contacted before, although they have plans and basic prototypes, they will be restricted by various realities and will not be able to land for a long time.
For example, teams that don't have art and modeling capabilities and lack outsourcing funds can only struggle with free resources. Gamers who don't have a programming foundation even have to spend a long time learning engine knowledge first.
As a result, the time cost will be suddenly extended, the product cannot be quickly tested and iterated, the idea will be outdated, and the so-called lightweight market will be difficult to run. Overall, the potential of lightweight products has not yet been fully valued and tapped by the industry.
In the face of various pain points, looking at the fields of manufacturers in the past two years, I think that the "editor" is likely to be the key to the development of creative lightweight games.
This is not the author's presumption, I can see that many game manufacturers are taking precautions, such as XD, NetEase, and Tencent have all taken action, all aiming to make up for the shortcomings of developers who lack resources, technical strength, and experience, and build a corresponding community ecology so that they can get enough market and user feedback.
With the rapid development of AI technology, an era of "creation for all" may not be far away.
So among the many platforms, are there any editors that focus on powering creative light products?
After all, the functions and incentive policies of some editors do not have a clear direction, and some are more inclined to the content creation of players.
There is an urgent need for a platform that can "put ideas into practice".
As a well-known game development competition in China, the Tencent Game Creation Competition has always attracted the attention of new R&D talents, and has also incubated many powerful young teams. This year's new "Dream Workshop" competition area hopes to help more developers unleash their creative potential with the help of the editor's capabilities.
"Qingyou Dream Studio" is a new game editor developed by Tencent Games, which adopts no-code programming, provides low-threshold visual programming and a large number of pre-made logic modules, and developers can get started as long as they have ideas and planning skills, and do not need any code skills.
From this product, it can be seen that Tencent attaches great importance to lightly creative game products, and is willing to use this as the leading role to connect developers. Therefore, for the R&D team that wants to catch up with this outlet, Qingyou Dream Workshop can be said to have an innate advantage.
At the same time, the editor has a built-in free resource library with more than 1,000 kinds of assets and supports independent upload of resources, covering art, audio resources and server capabilities, etc., to ensure the richness of R&D resources required by developers.
The editor's encapsulated multiplayer frame synchronization capability also supports strong physics gameplay, allowing developers to complete the production of multiplayer gameplay by simply writing logic as if they were making a single-player game. In addition, the introduction of AIGC-related capabilities basically constitutes a "low threshold, zero cost, and high efficiency" R&D experience.
From the perspective of the game categories adapted by the editor, Qingyou DreamWorks supports the creation of various types of games, especially casual and social-oriented games such as casual competition, platform jumping, side-scrolling parkour, puzzle solving, etc. The platform is also continuing to expand type support and continuously output various gameplay templates, so that light and even more targeted products have more diverse expressions - as long as developers have new ideas.
Of course, in order to better encourage creativity and incubate more good ideas, Qingyou DreamWorks is also prepared in terms of incentive policies and resource tilt.
In cooperation with the 2024 Tencent Game Creation Competition, Qingyou DreamWorks has set up a special competition area, including a social track and a university track, to guide more potential teams to try editor development.
Among them, the social track bonus is 500,000 yuan, the campus track bonus is 150,000 yuan, plus Tencent's advantages in promotion resources, which are very good opportunities for small teams and students.
It is worth mentioning that, in addition to functionality and resource support, DreamWorks also focuses on building a suitable community ecosystem for light games: it is not only a productivity tool for creative creators, but also a bridge between them and the creative gameplay needs of players.
In response to the rising enthusiasm of players for light games, DreamWorks hopes to create an ecosystem that allows players to easily find high-quality products and carry out effective communication with developers, so that creativity can be seen and tested by players. I believe that with such an ecology that "can implement the ideas in the brain", the lightweight market can run completely.
The tuyere always belongs to the doer
Whether it is from the promotion of various editors or from the needs of players, the lower threshold of R&D process and lighter product form will obviously be a major trend that cannot be ignored in the future.
However, to catch up with this trend, developers will undoubtedly need to change the traditional R&D concept and actively embrace the help brought by the new platform. In addition to continuing to cultivate team strength, strengthen technical strength and resource reserves, and accelerate the R&D cycle of using products to verify ideas, it is also an awareness and ability that is urgently needed at present.
After all, a flash of inspiration and a successful outlet are not waiting for anyone.
Jesse Schell, in his book The Art of Game Design, argues that if you have an idea, you should move forward with effective parallel prototypes as soon as possible, even if it can't be digitized, even if it's just pen and paper - because it's with prototypes that you can iterate your ideas.
The emergence of the DreamWorks Editor has obviously removed the biggest obstacle for creators with endless ideas in their hearts. Throughout the creative process, the distance between the idea and the finished product has never been so close. For creators who have unique ideas but are struggling with technology and resources, it's time to stop dreaming and try to jump into the editor's arms and start validating. Perhaps in the surging era of lightweight games, you are the leader.
Interested parties can follow the official account of "Qingyou Dream Workshop" and click on the event to register.