Behind the online game distribution platform is undoubtedly the new layout of Bytedance in the game market.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Sanyi Life” (ID: IT-3eLife ) , author: Sany bacteria.
In a blink of an eye, the “head-to-head war” between Bytedance and Tencent has lasted for more than two years, and in these two years it can be said that the two sides are you and me. Tencent successively offered Weishi and WeChat video accounts to challenge ByteDance’s “top general” Douyin, and ByteDance also took out the “Oasis Project” to direct Tencent’s cash.Niuyou play business.
And unlike the micro-vision, the video number is still not showing up, but the performance of ByteDance in the game field in recent years can undoubtedly be described by the sudden emergence. After launching new game brands “NUVERSE” and “PIXMAIN” in June this year, according to relevant media reports, ByteDance also launched the first new platform “Eggroll Game” based on casual games and niche games. Cooperate with game manufacturers to provide game publishing and testing platforms.
From the current experience of Sanyi Life, we found that the egg roll game APP can be regarded as an app store specializing in game categories from the internal design. From the column, UI, to the function, it is all related to The major mainstream application stores currently on the market are very close. From another perspective, in addition to the lack of community modules, the egg roll game and the famous taptap can be said to be very similar.
To talk about the difference between the egg roll game and TAPTAP and the current mainstream application stores, in our opinion, the biggest difference may be that it uses a lot of video content instead of graphics. The games on this platform will be presented on the homepage in the form of a video carousel. The game details interface is opened, and the actual video of the screen is also placed at the top, while the traditional game name, gameplay introduction, and comments are placed Two screens. There are opinions that such a design can also show players the core content of the game in the shortest time. Although this design may be anti-traditional, it also fits the characteristics of casual games, that is, open and play, making the opening cost for users lower.
And it is worth mentioning that the egg roll game, like the NVIDIA GEFORCE EXPERIENCE on the PC side, provides the function of automatically scanning the installed games in the user’s mobile phone and launching it with one click. At the same time, this platform has also designed the task of “starting the game from the egg roll”, and encourages users to form the user habit of using the platform to open the game by rewarding the “egg roll coin”.
In fact, bytedance has launched a platform such as the egg roll game, which is also considered by the outside world to be a reality-based “defense and attack” move. According to the “China Mobile Game iOS Strongest User Growth List in the First Half of 2020” released by Qimai data on ChinaJoy this year, Bytedance relied on 11 products on the list in the first half of this year to overpower the traditional game industry giants Tencent and NetEase.
Although ByteDance has become a force that cannot be ignored from the announcement of the game, it only took more than a year. However, judging from the list released by Qimai data, the games including “My Kung Fu Special Cow”, “Brain Hole Master”, “Sword Master”, “A Hundred Swordsman”, etc. are all from the characters. Ohayoo, which is responsible for the casual game publishing business under Jie Diao, does not appear in the more symbolic heavy games.
In the eyes of the outside world, this phenomenon actually reveals the current status of ByteDance in the game field. The money earned may still be traffic money, not game money. For example, the successful path of games such as “My Kung Fu Special Cow” is still inextricably changeable. With the help of the traffic pool of its own platform, the game can be converted into users by means of related video promotion and downloading portals. Diversion, which is similar to Tencent’s use of its own social product matrix to guide volume, has the same effect.
However, after completing the diversion, Bytedance and Tencent took a different path. The biggest difference between the two is that the latter has been immersed in the game field for more than ten years, has a group of studios with excellent research and development capabilities, and the monetization model of Tencent games is still free to paly, which is also an in-app purchase model; Most of the business model of Ohayoo publishing casual games under Jumping adopts the way of monetization by advertising.
However, it is highly dependent on advertising for monetization. In fact, in the game industry, it is difficult to shake Tencent’s “state” in the game field. As we all know, gamers are good at earning money, but players who have gone through the baptism of shoddy-skinned games a few years ago now have higher requirements for the quality of the game. This is why there are so many “Original Gods” produced by Mihayou. black spots, but one of the reasons why it attracted US$245 million in the first month of listing.
Therefore, from some viewpoints, the current problem that ByteDance is facing is that it cannot sell good products, and it is difficult to produce self-developed products. At present, there are a total of 10 known heavy games released or to be released by ByteDance in the domestic market. Among them, the only self-developed “Firepower Showdown” has been marked as “discontinued” on TAPTAP, and the only one is online “Hot Blood Street Basket” has stopped advertising.
And while Bytedance is hitting the wall with heavy games, Tencent has quietly restrained its trend of leveraging the market through casual games. On August 18, Tencent invested US$1.4 billion to acquire a minority stake in French Voodoo, the world’s largest casual game publisher, which is also known for having a set of reproducible and fast iterative publishing templates.
Under such circumstances, ByteDance may launch the egg roll game to strengthen its influence on the basic disk. After all, with the blessing of the huge traffic pool of byte beating, it is very likely that the egg roll game becomes the “distribution center” of domestic casual games with a high probability. Only by keeping one’s own basic disk, will the future have capital to use this as a base. Continue to challenge Tencent’s heavy game market.