71-page Game Research Report: China's Game R&D Trend Has Changed Dramatically, and All in Mini Games is Not the Only Solution

The report focuses on the following questions: Why does the current R&D landscape of Chinese game manufacturers show an hourglass pattern? What kind of layouts have the R&D vendors led by Tengwangmi made on the cross-platform side in order to adapt to the changes in the traffic platform? What trade-offs have the traffic-based manufacturers represented by Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Tuyou, Crazy Games, and 4399 made under the cross-platform tide? What significant changes have taken place in the two IAP tracks?

Key point 1: The R&D landscape of Chinese game manufacturers is moving towards an hourglass pattern, cross-platform development is becoming increasingly polarized, and the number of pure mobile game developers is shrinking

The R&D landscape of game developers represented by Tengwangmi is evolving deeply towards the cross-platform of mobile phones, PCs, and consoles. They try to consolidate their core user base through high-quality mobile games, and then win high-value users through both PC and console. At the same time, it will open up overseas markets and compete with European, American, Japanese and other manufacturers.

Traffic-oriented manufacturers such as Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Tuyou, Crazy Games, and 4399 have begun to focus on the mini game track, spanning mobile phones, PCs, PADs and other terminals. The reason is that after the traffic exchange of WeChat and Douyin, the link for players to experience the game has been greatly reduced, coupled with the increasingly perfect infrastructure and commercialization of WeChat, which has attracted manufacturers to develop medium and heavy games on WeChat, maximizing the advantages of the above-mentioned manufacturers' purchase volume and manufacturer models. Overall, the R&D landscape of Chinese game manufacturers is showing an hourglass pattern and is evolving at an accelerated pace.

It should be added that Tencent holds the traffic platform WeChat, and its R&D territory covers two cross-terminal trends, the latter of which is mainly used as a supplementary scenario for mobile phones, precipitating the relationship chain and non-key R&D directions. This move will also help compete for the advertising budget of byte-based games. As for ByteDance, we believe that the management abandons the game business and focuses on AI, which is in line with its own business logic, that is, to be a water buyer.

In the long run, we believe that once the leading game manufacturers build their own traffic pools, the importance of traffic platforms will be greatly weakened. We believe that game developers and traffic platforms are interdependent in the short to medium term, and in the long run, the correlation is becoming less and less.

Core point 2: From the app store to the player community to the cloud gaming platform, game manufacturers have been committed to building their own player platforms

The essence of competition among game manufacturers is nothing more than competing for the quality of the game and finding the target users. Around the former, the so-called content-based game manufacturers and skin-changing game manufacturers were born. In response to the latter, brand advertising, psoriasis advertising, emerged.

Looking at game manufacturers such as Tengwangmi, it is easy to find that they aim to build self-developed and self-initiated capabilities, build player communities and their own game platforms. In essence, it is to gather core players, shorten the reach link, and create a commercial model with a high quality-to-price ratio. For example, Tencent Game Community's 'Flash' NetEase Games' God'miHoYo'MiHoYo', 'MiHoYo', Tencent Cloud Game Platform's 'Pioneer Cloud Gaming', NetEase Cloud Gaming', 'MiHoYo' 'miHoYo Launcher', etc.

Under the cross-platform trend, the above-mentioned manufacturers build a closed-loop traffic or rely on the traffic platform based on their own business matrix to attract players to the player community. For the sake of risk control, they will not bet their own game business on a single traffic platform. That is, we believe that NetEase Games and miHoYo will not vigorously develop mini games, but independent cloud game apps, and cloud mini games are only auxiliary supplements.

Core point 3: Terminals and traffic platforms will always change, and manufacturers want to maximize the dividends of new traffic platforms and quickly monetize

From PCs and the Web, to mobile phones and traffic platforms, almost every generation will give birth to potential new stars. It must be reasonable for game manufacturers to survive until now and still rank among the first echelon of new traffic platforms. In short, it is to gain in-depth insight into the user attributes of the new traffic platform, and to seize the target players and maximize business value through rapid project establishment and its own traffic model/capabilities.

At present, the traffic-oriented manufacturers represented by Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, Tuyou, Crazy Games, and 4399 have gone through the stage of pure mobile game App transplantation and entered the stage of native mini games on the project approval side. On the distribution side, the purchase models/capabilities of the above-mentioned manufacturers have been connected to WeChat and Douyin, and have been continuously optimized according to the characteristics of the platform, so as to obtain high-quality users at the lowest price.

We have observed that small and medium-sized R&D manufacturers are at a crossroads, whether to embrace traffic platforms and go all out to develop mini games, or stick to the position of mobile games. As Mini Games become more and more attractive for money, we believe that a large number of small and medium-sized developers will turn to Mini Games.

However, just like the peaks and troughs of the game industry in the past, it is often a very small number of developers who are the first to enjoy the platform dividends. The same is true for mini games, which require extremely keen hotspot tracking capabilities and efficient streaming models from game manufacturers. Therefore, we believe that the focus is not on what kind of terminal and traffic platform to develop, but that developers need to maximize their own R&D advantages.

Key point 4: Novels and short plays may become the flashpoint of the development of IAA mini games

In the past year, WeChat and Douyin have coincidentally mentioned that they will focus on IAA mini games, and have given support policies such as tools and advertising resources. In the development trend of IAA Mini Games, from "Sheep is a Sheep" to "Lying Flat Development", we see the potential of long-term operation of IAA Mini Games, and long-term content updates, the launch of operational activities, and the addition of sub-gameplay have also become the trend of IAA Mini Games.

In addition, in addition to integrating life elements into the categories of puzzle solving and finding differences, IAA mini games have also begun to pay more attention to the plot content. As for the theme of the story, products that choose urban counterattack novels, popular short dramas and other themes often have good performance, such as "Flying Human Voice 3" in the Top 10 of the Play List, and even female-oriented novels and short drama products, such as "Hongu is reborn".

We believe that novels and short plays may become the flashpoint of the development of IAA mini games this year. The boundaries between games and novels and skits will become more and more blurred. It's time to witness new species.

Core point 5: SLG has broken through strongly, and the trend of IAP derivation is close to APP

In the IAP mini game category analysis, we found that the category tends to solidify, and the products of RPG, cards and other sub-categories tend to solidify, such as RPG Seek Like and Battle Like The best-selling products have increased by 40% in half a year. In the case of poor product quality, the overall pattern of IAP tends to be a traffic competition.

Recently, two SLGs have rushed to the top of the best-selling list, among which "Endless Winter" ranks firmly in the Top 2, and has also beaten "Seeking the Way" to top the best-selling list of mini games. At the same time, "Fingertip Warriors" has entered the top 10 of the best-selling list, and both products have achieved such results without vigorous buying, and the era of IAP mini game SLG may have arrived.

This also means that in IAP mini games, the derivative trend is beginning to approach APP games, and the importance of gameplay will become more and more important.