Breakout will become the key word for small and medium-sized game companies in 2020
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account : znkedu) .
Author / Chen Dengxin
Editor / Li Wenjie
The enthusiasm of mobile games has already appeared, and it is more prominent now.
On May 27, 2020, the data disclosed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed that the number of apps that can be monitored in China was 3.59 million, of which the number of game apps continued to lead, reaching 884,000 models, an increase of 0.5 million models from the end of March, accounting for all apps The proportion is 24.6%.
The corresponding enthusiasm for paying for games.
According to the “Game Industry Survey Report during the Epidemic Prevention and Control Period”, the game industry has become an important driving force to stimulate economic recovery. The mobile game market revenue in the first quarter of 2020 was nearly 55 billion yuan, a record high, an increase of more than 49% year-on-year , There has also been a substantial increase in the previous month.
It is undeniable that games have become an important bridge between people ’s spiritual world and real life.
However, under the glorious scene, most small and medium-sized game companies are moving forward to bear the burden of survival: the intensification of polarization within the industry presents the Matthew effect, the serious homogenization of rough production, the difficulty of reviewing game version numbers, and the high cost of customer acquisition. The development of small and medium game companies.
Some companies are carnival, and some companies are cheering.
Solving food and clothing has become the number one problem
“The water is too deep, the wind is too strong, and there is no power to talk.” This is the motto of game development engineer Jia Peng. He now lives in Nanjing and became a practitioner half a year ago.
After graduating from college, Jia Peng looked forward to becoming a “north drifter” in the future, and found an Internet company to live the life of a farmer: “I bought a house at home and urged me to go home early. Years, I figured it out. “
Jiang Peng joined a small and medium game company.
“I used to think that it was all program development, it should be easy to get started, isn’t it just a few lines of code?” The first project that Jia Peng participated in felt the difficulty of cross-border development, “The responsible Boss combat mechanism problem Hundreds, for example, the drop rate cannot be completely random. To enter the drop library through a counter, the inside of the drop library can be random. “
Jia Peng is already a veteran, but another problem has arisen: the company’s business is getting worse.
Jia Peng told Zinc Scale that there is serious polarization within the gaming industry: giant companies such as Tencent and NetEase are living more and more interesting, while Lilith, Sanqi Interactive Entertainment, Perfect World, Giant Network, Dream World, Shanda The internetOther large companies also live a life of wine and meat, and small and medium-sized game companies have a more subtle living environment.
Public data shows that Tencent ’s game business revenue in the first quarter of 2020 was 37.298 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 34.5%; NetEase ’s game business revenue in the first quarter of 2020 was 13.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 14.1% .
According to Qixinbao’s statistics, 33 of the A-share listed companies can be classified as game companies, including well-known game companies such as Sanqi Interactive Entertainment, Perfect World, Giant Network, Shanda Network, etc., which opened in the first quarter of 2020 The total revenue is 21.827 billion yuan, which is far from Tencent and NetEase.
In contrast, small and medium game companies need to solve the problem of food and clothing.
According to the observation of the gamma data, it is found that: “The game applications ranked outside the top 60 during the Spring Festival not only did not grow, but were squeezed by the head game, and the overall download volume showed a negative growth trend.”
“Traffic is gathering more and more in the head and waist games, and we continue to fight hard in the knockout.” Jia Peng said that many products of his company face the dilemma of insufficient growth of paying users and entering the second half of the product life cycle. , The idea of quitting a job emerged.
For this, Tan Yanfeng, former vice president of Shanda Games, believes that the future is a strong player, Hengqiang: “The threshold of competition in the gaming industry has become very high, and it will be difficult for small and medium-sized teams to bear. If there is no strong capital support, it will be very It is difficult to keep up with the fierce competition in the industry. “
Former Vice President of Shanda Games Tan Yanfeng
Two major pain points cause chaos in the industry
Like Jia Peng, Fan Chunyang also has a deep understanding of the situation of small and medium game companies.
Fan Chunyang’s first job choice was a big game company. At the age of 33, Fan Chunyang moved to a small and medium-sized game company to become a project leader and received equity incentives: “I hope to achieve financial freedom after going public.”
“Small and medium-sized companies have few staff, short decision-making chains, and flexible operations. As long as they accurately grasp the needs of players, there is still room for survival.” A martial arts card mobile game developed by Fan Chunyang has won good reputation.
However, other products of the company are difficult to say.
Fan Chunyang told ZincThe first major pain point for small and medium-sized game companies in the scale is restricted by the version number of the game: “Since the version number has been tightened, games without a version number cannot go to the Android app store. What ’s worse is that after June 30, 2020 Apple The app store will not be available. “
This means that a large number of games have narrowed customer acquisition channels.
“The solution is to rely on the advertising platform, and thus fall into the strange circle of buying volume → accumulating paid users → repurchasing volume, which has further increased the cost of customer acquisition. Currently, the cost of acquiring customers from small factories is mostly 120-200 yuan.” Fan Chunyang admits that only one or two of the company’s products get the game version number, and most of those products that are walking in the gray area are made without making money.
Guoyuan Media believes that channel numbers are strictly controlled, and major platforms strengthen the game qualification review, which will undoubtedly bring a blow to games without version numbers, but will not produce for head game companies that adhere to standardized operations. Too much impact.
A second pain point emerged in this context: heavy marketing over R & D led to crude manufacturing, and even the use of “vest pack” means to harvest waves of traffic. The so-called “vest pack” is the same game, with different game names, different promotional content, and different login interfaces.
“Vest bag” has become a means of operation
An anonymous person told Zinc Scale: “This is the unspoken rule for the survival of small and medium-sized game companies. Some vests sell sentiment, some vests sell excitement, or some vests sell sci-fi, some vests sell dark. In short, the focus is different, in order to attract users with different tastes. “
According to the data released by Chuangqi Information Technology Co., Ltd. to the media, the total number of mobile games online in the Apple App Store is about 219.2 thousand, of which there are about 162,000 games with no version number and “vest pack”, accounting for up to 74%. %, While regular mobile games only account for about 1/4.
Fan Chunyang pointedly pointed out: “Most app stores are first-time review, but only manual review. Now it has developed to have a team to eat the” vest pack “bowl of rice, depending on the function name, class name confusion modification, string, Field reversible encryption and other means escaped the machine review. “
Go out to sea to find a way to make a living
The survival of the domestic market is not easy. More and more small and medium-sized game companies are looking at overseas markets.