Following "Jump", "Sheep is a Sheep" and "Synthetic Big Watermelon", "Catching a Big Goose" once again became popular on the whole network and became a "fishing artifact" for migrant workers. At the end of April, the Douyin IAA Mini Game Ecological Conference and the WeChat Open Class IAA Mini Game Special were played against each other in Changsha and Wuhan respectively. These phenomena all mean that the small game is no longer "small".
Recently, "Leopard Change" found that in addition to the basic routine of obtaining props by sharing links or watching 30-second ads, the brand of "Yuanqi Forest" has appeared in the basket of the "Catch the Big Goose" game. Another "King of Salted Fish" has added fancy advertising technologies such as forced pop-up windows to pause the ad progress bar and a close button for automatic retraction and dodging on the basic operation of shake jump ads.
Mini-games with simple gameplay and dogskin plaster advertisements were once not even called "games" in the eyes of heavy gamers, but just like the overlord earthy short dramas that cannot be called "film and television works", mini-games have quietly become a blue ocean track.
The myth of game manufacturers getting rich overnight has spread in the rivers and lakes, and various large manufacturers have also begun to grab the cake of mini games. So, how did mini-games become the "melting pot of time" for contemporary people, and who made a lot of money in mini-games?
A "short drama" in the game world, filling the gap in time
"It's not a lottery ticket to see luck, the ending has already been set in the code of the game backend. Netizen @吉事多 recorded his game experience of "Catching a Big Goose" on social platforms.
Lanfei Mutual Entertainment's "Catching the Big Goose" is a recent dark horse, and on the WeChat game best-selling list, "Catching the Big Goose" frequently wins the first place on the popularity list. Similar to "Sheep", "Catch the Big Goose" is an item matching and elimination mini-game, which can be played with a click in the mini-program on WeChat and Douyin.
So, how did catching a "goose" become a new trend step by step?
First of all, the mini-game is characterized by being "small". Compared with medium-to-heavy mobile games and online games, games that can be played when you open the Mini Program can be stuffed into any gap in time, just like short videos.
In terms of gameplay, the industry calls games such as "Sheep a Sheep" and "Catching a Big Goose" as "Roguelike" games, which are a more traditional and commonly used genre. To put it simply, this type of game has a fixed framework and rules, but each time you enter the game, it is a different level or scene, and there is no save continuation function, and the character will start from scratch after death.
It is not difficult for players to find out that the real reason for the addictiveness of this type of mini-game is the game mechanic of "you can't lose in the first level, you won't win in the second level". Passing the first level with ease is the "simple" mask worn by the mini-game. Just as a skit needs to be topped up in the most dramatic and conflicting places, the mini-game guides users to click and share under the illusion of "almost succeeding".
Different from the "volume" in terms of gameplay difficulty or art design, the mini-game is a "volume" in "grasping human nature". Rather than playing the game in one go without restraint, "Catch the Big Goose" hopes that users can continue to retain it and click to play a few games every day. Therefore, after clearing the level, players can only wait for the next day to unlock a new scenario before reopening the game.
And every time the player clears the level, he will get a "big goose" with a different card face, and once again stimulate the player's "desire to win" through "collection". "Sheep is a Sheep" also retains a lot of users in this way, and it is still far ahead of the WeChat mini game list.
In addition, "Catch the Big Goose" has obvious social attributes. Resurrection through sharing is the first step in the social fission of "Catch the Big Goose". Due to the difficulty of customs clearance, many netizens on platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu have summarized and shared strategies and customs clearance cheats, so after users who "caught the big goose" get a sense of achievement, they will naturally share their achievements on social platforms to form a secondary dissemination.
"Putting pressure on you with a 10-minute limit, using a progress bar to imply that you're about to succeed, and 'only three chances a day' may seem like dissuading you from stopping, but it's actually more motivating to win. When success is close at hand, and when you can succeed by using props again, the more geese you catch, the more likely you are to succumb. @吉事多 said.
400,000 Mini Game Developers,
Waiting for the next "Catch the Big Goose"
Mini game developer Li Wu still remembers the thrilling afternoon when the company's mini game products suddenly rushed to the top 100 of WeChat's best-selling list.
"An ad creative exploded, directly bringing more than 60,000 new additions a day. Maintenance has been done all day, because the recharge interface API of Tencent Pay has reached the upper limit of 500,000 in a single day, and the user cannot recharge at night, the background data indicators are all alarming, and the reset and recovery will be carried out immediately to make up the order for the player. ”
Similar to "Jump" and "Sheep", the explosion of mini-games seems to be a matter of an instant. Mini games are becoming more and more existential, attracting more practitioners to join.
According to the "2023 China Game Industry Report", the revenue of the domestic mini program game market in 2023 will be 20 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of up to 300%. On April 24, the WeChat Mini Game team revealed that in the first quarter of this year, the number of developers has exceeded 400,000, an increase of 100,000 compared with 2023.
As early as the 2022 China Game Industry Annual Conference, Zhang Jiaxu, the founder of "Sheep", revealed that the revenue of "Sheep" has exceeded 100 million, the team has expanded from 10 to 20 people, and the initial cost of the game is only 500,000 yuan.
If you can make a popular mini-game, it will be relatively simple to maintain in the later stage, and the income will be sustainable. Obviously, 400,000 developers are waiting to realize their own myth of getting rich.
According to the form of monetization, Mini Games are mainly divided into three categories: IAP (in-app purchase payment, including game prop sales, level payment, etc.), IAA (ad monetization), and IAP + IAA (hybrid monetization). Among them, games that include in-app purchases need to be approved before they can be launched, so IAA games have become the main battle for developers.
According to "Leopard Change", the development cycle of mini games is relatively short, and even individual developers can complete it in about a month. Chen Xi told "Leopard Change" that it usually takes a week or two to develop a demo version and submit it for review, and the review cycle is about one or two months, and then refine the gameplay, from the end of 2023 to the present, he has launched 5 mini games on WeChat.
In terms of game design, Chen Xi told "Leopard Change": "In the early stage, I will directly look at the foreign game list to see what game types are more popular recently, and at the same time, it also requires some luck, and sometimes even small games have to 'rub hot spots'." A small game designed by Chen Xi called "Sewage is Coming" has accumulated more than 10,000 users in less than a month after it was launched, of which 70% or 80% were clicked in through WeChat searches for keywords such as "nuclear sewage".
In addition, with the assistance of AI technology, the threshold for creating a mini-game has become lower. It is understood that through AI drawing tools such as Stable Diffusion, the art needs of mini games can be basically met, and AI tools such as ChatGPT can also solve some development problems.
It's just that most developers and developers have to wait for the silence before dawn before they get rich overnight. "There are two mini-games that have been advertised, and the income is only a few dozen yuan a day. Chen Xi told "Leopard Change" that this kind of income is also the status of most of the individual mini game developers.
Internet giants also want to catch a "big goose"
On December 28, 2017, the first WeChat mini-game "Jump" was launched, and three days later, DAU (daily active users) exceeded 100 million, and after the official opening of investment, the advertising fee of "Jump" was 5 million a day. It is impossible for Internet companies with a keen sense of smell to ignore such a strong ability to attract money and potential for commercialization.
It wasn't until February 2019 that Douyin launched its first mini-game, "Yinyue Qiuqiu". At that time, the social system in Douyin was not as perfect as it is now, and if "Yinyue Qiuqiu" wanted to spread through the fission of social relationships, it still had to go through WeChat first. The Douyin mini game that lacked social fission failed to develop smoothly.
This year's situation is markedly different. On April 23rd, in Changsha, where small game companies such as Zhise, Renyou, Hi Lu, Lekong, Youpin, Zero One, and Zhongyu Zhiyun gathered, the huge engine Douyin IAA Mini Game Conference was held. The next day, WeChat held a WeChat open class - IAA small game special session in Wuhan, and the meaning of calling the board in the air was obvious.
In the past year, DAU has increased by 150% year-on-year, the game time per user has also increased by 54.3%, and the average investment life cycle of Mini Games has reached about 43 days. At the same time, the monthly active users of Douyin Mini Games have also exceeded the 100 million mark recently.
WeChat Mini Games, which opened earlier, are obviously bigger and better in terms of data. WeChat revealed that in the first quarter of this year, the daily activity of mini games increased by 20% year-on-year, the monthly active users of IAA mini games were 500 million, advertisers increased by 35% year-on-year, and traffic increased by 15%.
The-for-tat confrontation between Douyin and WeChat is not limited to the two conferences, and the real battle is reflected in the recent policy. On April 1st, Douyin launched a new new revenue sharing policy for in-app purchases of mini games, launching an unprecedented "91 open" sharing ratio, and in March, WeChat launched a similar mini game growth incentive program, with IAA developers increasing the incentive ratio to a maximum of 40%, plus a 50% cash share, developers can get up to 90% of the revenue.
The snipe and the clam compete, and the fisherman profits. For game developers, it's naturally "all of them".
"Software copyright is required to launch a mini game on Douyin, and this is faster than WeChat. Generally, WeChat takes more than 20 working days, and it can be solved in about a week after Douyin is passed. Chen Xi told "Leopard Change" that at present, the mini games he has on hand are all applied for online on WeChat and Douyin.
Although judging from the data disclosed on both sides and the game experience, WeChat Mini Games have a larger plate and more mature development, but the competition between Tencent and Byte, from short videos to small games, is fundamentally competing for commercialization. Specifically, mini games are an important tool to help Internet platforms quickly consume ads.
Li Wu said, "What brings huge revenue to Douyin and WeChat is the advertising system behind them, which looks at traffic-exposure-click-conversion-payment. If a video ad on Douyin is watched for 100 yuan once, and the user is directly asked to place an order to buy something for 150 yuan, the advertiser will put all the company's money into it. ”
At the same time, Li Wu revealed that the advantage of bytes is that the conversion efficiency of the current Douyin advertising system is more accurate than Tencent's, so the focus is on Douyin buying. Douyin has stepped up the layout of mini games and opened the external links of mini games, also in order to increase its advertising revenue.
However, in recent years, with the optimization of WeChat in terms of business transformation and the strengthening of technology, when the Mini Program can directly run medium and heavy games with in-app purchases, the monetization efficiency has been greatly improved, and it has also ushered in great growth.
In any case, the continuous influx of players and developers has made Mini Games a "sprout" growing against the trend in the Internet, but in essence, it is still a traffic business.