Hi, I'm Dr. X.
Nowadays, the proportion of mobile games in the market is becoming more and more important, and mobile games are also flying - the picture is becoming more and more exquisite, the gameplay is becoming more and more complex, the plot is becoming more and more blurred, and the storage is getting bigger and bigger......
Players complain that mobile games are getting bigger and bigger
While all game manufacturers are eager to fill up all the memory of players' mobile phones, many players choose to enjoy the fun of games on WeChat.
Even if many friends don't know about WeChat mini games, they have heard of works like "Jump" and "Sheep".
At that time, "Sheep is a Sheep" that exploded the circle of friends
Some friends may wonder: why is this kind of game that doesn't seem very smart and has little depth of gameplay so popular? And how do you make a lot of money?
In fact, WeChat Mini Games, which have 750 million users, have become a new track for many game manufacturers to compete for, relying on strong traffic advantages, and many small and medium-sized manufacturers have made a lot of money with their own explosive models.
So today, let's talk about the treasure track in the eyes of this small and medium-sized manufacturer, and take a look at those WeChat games that make a fortune in silence.
Key point 1: Play games, watch ads, get paid, and make money easily with WeChat mini games
In fact, the market for WeChat mini games has already begun to develop. I believe that many friends can see some game advertisements when using various APPs, including the familiar one-knife 999, the suffocating intellectual puzzle, and the archery villain that can never be played...... Most of these are advertisements for WeChat Mini Games.
Advertisements that make people "smart".
But when you really open the WeChat mini game, you will find that the current mini game track is also a fairy fight.
There are games like "Catch the Big Goose" and "Shoot at the Zombies", which rely on simple and magical gameplay content to form a hot out of the circle, and there are also "Seeking the Way" and "The King of Salted Fish", which make crazy advertisements and crazy buyers who swipe the screen in everyone's mobile phones.
Very magical "King of Salted Fish" commercial
Nowadays, WeChat Mini Games can include a large number of games, which is seen as a new opportunity by various manufacturers, and it is Tencent's WeChat team that has seen the unlimited potential of Mini Games and continues to invest in technical and operational support to help developers achieve success in the field of Mini Games.
Nowadays, there are a lot of choices in WeChat mini games
The original WeChat Mini Game did not have complete engine support, which led to the games that appeared in 2017 when the WeChat Mini Game was just launched, and many games were temporarily rejected by WeChat due to engine problems.
Fortunately, with a simple game like "Jump" and the crazy forwarding and diffusion of WeChat Moments, more WeChat users noticed that "it turns out that you can play games directly on WeChat".
The enchanting "Jump"
In addition, the current game market is still a large-scale mobile game that can take more of the cake, but the battle on this track is becoming more and more fierce - there are pillar games of large manufacturers changing hands, and there are also newly emerging second-game manufacturers involuting each other.
In such a cruel environment, the remote and lonely WeChat mini game platform has become a treasure of feng shui, and many game teams who are unwilling to compete with big factories come to visit, and the WeChat mini game team has extended an olive branch to them with an open and free attitude, and the two sides are happy.
For example, when many emerging game teams do not understand the market and do not know how to build their own profit ideas, such an activity of sincere teaching with platform data is precious. As a result, the scale of the open class has become larger and more stable, and more and more game teams have joined, and it has been held for seven years in a blink of an eye.
From 2018 to 2020, the products of the WeChat Mini Game Platform have achieved outstanding results, and their experiences are shared in the open class
When it comes to how the games of the WeChat mini game platform make money, we have to briefly introduce its link - the WeChat platform recruits the owners who need to publish advertisements, and these advertising spaces are buried in various games within the platform.
Players are directed to external ads within the game, and the game team can receive the compensation generated from the platform for playing the ads, and the platform also earns money by selling the ads.
A simple diagram is set up to help everyone understand
To put it simply, players watch ads while playing a game, and these advertising fees are the revenue of the game. Therefore, most of these games do not emphasize numerical values, but more to attract players to stop by the gameplay, and use rewards and resources to induce players to browse ads.
In industry terms, it's IAA games.
For example, if you look at an advertisement, you can get a gold reward to attract players to view the ad
You may think that this kind of game with ads everywhere is very low, but don't underestimate it.
According to the data shared by Li Qing, product director of WeChat Mini Games, which just ended in Wuhan at the end of April, IAA Games alone gained 500 million MAU (monthly active users) in the two months from February to March 2024, becoming the main contributor to the platform's user growth.
Li Qing even said on the spot that the team predicted that the overall business volume of IAA Mini Games in 2024 is expected to exceed 10 billion yuan.
Li Qing, product director of WeChat Mini Game, shows the explanation data
In other words, in the two months from February to March 2024, the monthly active players of WeChat Mini Games are enough to catch up with the monthly active players of a considerable number of APP games on the market. It can also be seen from this how amazing the small game platform relying on WeChat, a treasure trove of traffic, is.
In addition, most WeChat mini games do not rely on strong numerical stimuli, but rather attract players to join through simple and easy-to-use gameplay. In other words, the WeChat Mini Games team is more supportive of products that emphasize game creativity. How ideas are born and how they are realized, these are what the WeChat Mini Games team has been supporting and encouraging.
Li Qing shared the statistics of the current developer scale of the mini game platform
Tencent has also devoted a lot of resources to the WeChat Mini Game team. For example, "Yuan Dream Star", which was just launched at the end of last year, as a party game that Tencent bets heavily on, everyone should have seen how crazy the buying volume was at that time, and the advertising was overwhelming.
Such a "pro-son" product has also been smoothly connected to the platform by the WeChat mini game team, so that players can play directly in the WeChat mini game without downloading. Recently, the monthly active users of the WeChat mini game of "Yuan Dream Star" have reached 78.15 million, second only to "Seeking the Dao" and "The King of Salted Fish".
"Yuan Dream Star" can be played on the WeChat mini game
In addition to "Yuan Dream Star", like "Metal Slug Awakening", "Rush! Biscuit Man: Kingdom" and "Jewel Smash Bros. are also currently available on the WeChat mini game platform.
The platform provides user traffic, the game uses product features to attract users to stop, and then pushes to browse ads, uses advertisements to realize traffic realization, and advertises for the dads of the owners to obtain advertising remuneration, which is how WeChat mini games have built a complete industrial chain.
The good operation of this industrial chain has made WeChat, which holds the traffic, a huge cake, and there is still room for carving it up.
Key point 2: large purchases, volume advertising, more creativity, game manufacturers show their powers
Another major advantage of WeChat Mini Games is that it is cost-effective to buy.
In today's traffic-driven environment, platforms that hold the basic disk of traffic hope to increase traffic monetization income, from 1 cent per ad in the past, to more than 6 jiao per ad today, advertising is becoming more and more expensive, and the cost of buying volume is getting higher and higher.
However, compared with other platforms, WeChat Mini Games have no need to worry about the high quality of the traffic source due to their own undertaking on WeChat, and in order to attract more games to settle in, WeChat Mini Games have another concession for the game purchase volume of their own platform, so that the real discount directly stands out in the buying volume market and becomes a gathering place for various manufacturers to compete for advertising.
This style of video advertising must be often seen in various apps
For example, "Seeking the Way", which has recently occupied many APP opening screen advertising spaces, is the potential work won by Sanqi Mutual Entertainment, and the core of the gameplay of "cutting trees and brushing treasures, numerical crushing" is presented in just 15 seconds of video.
After the game was launched, it quickly entered the top three of the best-selling list of WeChat mini games, and topped the best-selling list on April 25 under the promotion of Sanqi's large-scale purchase.
For example, "Seeking the Dao" at the top of the list is a product of Sanqi
This game accurately captures the user's demand for direct feedback on the gameplay requirements that are not complicated and easy to use. On the other hand, it focuses on showing its own advantages in advertising and video promotion content to accurately target the target audience.
Compared with the traditional buying environment, the feature of mini games can make more full use of the exposure of advertisements to a certain extent, so the link will be shorter. In the entire purchase volume, the internal click rate and conversion rate of the mini game itself are still extremely competitive, and will naturally be noticed and studied in depth by various game manufacturers.
"Seeking the Way" advertisement
The purchase advertising of this kind of new game of large manufacturers will provide the demand for other WeChat mini games to play ads, so that other games can earn advertising remuneration, which is also a unique advantage of the WeChat mini game platform compared with the traditional buying environment.
In addition, since the monetization method of IAA games is to induce users to browse ads, the gameplay design is more to stimulate users to keep playing, and use ads to bundle physical strength and other resources to form a positive cycle, so most IAA games can focus more on gameplay display when promoting.
That's why we often see video ads for gameplay in mini games, and most of them are quite interesting to watch.
Advertisements like this can be seen everywhere, but they are really impressive
Nowadays, more and more mini-game advertisements are finding new ways to attract users' attention through various strange and even "neurological" ways, so that they can be remembered by users.
Comparing the form of video account and live broadcast promotion, for example, heavy games take a long time to display all the content, and it is easy for users to run away halfway. On the contrary, IAA mini games, because they are easy to use, smooth gameplay, and emphasize attracting users to continue playing, it is natural to achieve the effect of game content promotion through short video materials.
For example, this kind of dismantling and decompression game can explain the gameplay and cool points clearly in just a few seconds
Of course, it is not a very comfortable experience for players to enter the game and find that there are frequent ads in the game, but the lack of ads and the product cannot achieve good monetization, so the proportion of ads and the game experience should be balanced.
At present, a consensus rule of IAA games is not to design card points for users in the early stage, motivate users to experience the game to their heart's content, and then set card points in the later stage after the game experience is advanced to a certain node, so that players who are willing to accept it will pay for the game.
Most IAA games don't have resource or numerical points in the early stages
It is also worth noting that the audience of WeChat Mini Games is not aimed at mature gamers, but more to attract pan-users who have little contact with games and have a demand for light casual games.
These users are not necessarily familiar with how to find and get games, so click-to-play mini-program games that do not require download and installation are very suitable.
And after playing, it appears directly in WeChat's recently used applet, which is very convenient for revisiting
The light casual nature of the game content, as well as the convenience of click-to-play, make WeChat Mini Games extremely attractive to users who are new to the game.
SLG products like "Endless Winter", which should have been unsuitable for the mini-game platform, have also successfully gained a foothold on the WeChat mini-game platform by first revealing the hands-on simulation business content for players to lower the threshold for entering the pit, and then gradually releasing card RPG and SLG content after cultivating the game foundation, and gained considerable loyal users.
"Endless Winter" starts with a simulation operation, and gradually unlocks SLG content as the game progresses
After joining the WeChat mini game platform, the game team can feel the one-stop comfortable service, with a game platform with stable traffic and affordable promotion channels, so that the game team can get the golden sand and expand its influence.
In this way, while the WeChat mini game platform includes more and more game products, it will also gradually strengthen its own urban barriers, becoming an increasingly solid and lucrative gold mine in the game industry.
Summary after class:
Although when it comes to high-quality games, everyone often thinks of triple-A masterpieces, but I believe that many players agree that games can only have attractive motivation to play with good creativity and good gameplay. And the current WeChat mini game platform is such a stage that emphasizes the creative gameplay of games, at least it provides a friendly enough opportunity for many shy game developers to showcase.
Perhaps through the inspiration here, it is unknown that we will really be able to see the high-quality games that sprouted on the WeChat mini game platform in the future.