In the past year, the growth rate of the online gaming industry has slowed down, gradually bidding farewell to the era of making a fortune overnight. Mini games and social games have become the weapons for the gaming giants to brew a new round of battles.
Watching the "Spring" of mini games in 2011
The biggest miracle in the gaming industry in 2010 was undoubtedly created by "Angry Birds": with a development cost of $100,000, it was downloaded 50 million times in 2010, generating over 8 million dollars in revenue from the US iPhone version alone. Even without the grandeur and excitement brought by "World of Warcraft", the impact of mini games and casual games on the gaming industry is profound. The game life of players is composed of "Plants vs. Zombies, I can; Fruit Ninja, I understand; Save Angry Birds." At the same time, the competition among industry giants has escalated from competing for players to competing for developers.
After the Spring Festival in 2011, the development platforms built by the gaming giants began to emerge. Following Shanda's acquisition of the mini game development platform MochiMedia, Netease's iGATE plan for the iTown platform games was exposed. Recently, there has also been news that Tencent's mini game developer platform and advertising alliance will be officially launched and operated in the near future.
There is no doubt that whoever has more developer resources will take the lead in the new round of challenges.
Player "lightweight"
The reason why the gaming giants in China have shifted their focus to mini games and casual games is mainly due to the crazy popularity of games like "Plants vs. Zombies", "Angry Birds", and "Happy Farm". This subtle change was already evident at Chinajoy in 2010. Developers of famous casual games such as "Zuma" and "Plants vs. Zombies" announced their strategic partnership with Renren.com, and giants like Giant and Shanda began operating web games.
These subtle changes are not unfounded. The trend of lightweight games is approaching. According to the Annual White Paper on China's Online Gaming Industry, the scale of the domestic online gaming market reached 25.8 billion yuan in 2009 and is expected to exceed 30 billion yuan in 2010. With the number of players surpassing 300 million, China has become the country with the most players in the world. At the same time, the online gaming client is also undergoing differentiation: in addition to heavyweight clients, lightweight clients represented by web games, mini games, and mobile games are emerging. Compared with large-scale online games, the characteristics of these games are that they do not require downloading, can be played anytime, easy to get started, and fun.
In the eyes of industry insiders, these changes are undoubtedly closely related to the popularity of Facebook and Twitter. The demand for fragmented information in the community has been rigidly released, and most people use their spare time to pay attention to their friends' information and play mini games, leading to the popularity of social games. On the other hand, the competition in the MMORPG market has become more intense and has gradually reached a bottleneck. The gaming giants also need to find new breakthroughs.
A survey from Korean players shows that "when many players evaluate a game, if it is a casual game, they will look at its first impression, but for MMORPG games, it takes some time to make a correct evaluation." In other words, mini games and casual games are more likely to attract customers at the first time. "After they try it for the first time, they can decide whether they are interested in continuing to play."
Layout for developers
To take the lead in the mini game battle, developers are undoubtedly the resources that industry giants are most eager to grab. So far, Shanda, Netease, and Jiucheng have all completed their initial layouts. Of course, the different layout methods also reflect their different development strategies.
Shanda was the first to start building a mini game development platform. Shanda Games first spent 80 million US dollars to acquire the Mochi Media platform, and then established the Maqiu Network for domestic developers. As a game distribution and in-game advertising platform in the United States, Mochi Media's main task is to collect various mini games, promote them through cooperative channels, and find advertisers to benefit game developers, the platform itself, and channel partners by embedding ads in the games.
At the same time, Netease, which has performed well in MMORPGs, has also joined the battle. In December last year, Netease's iTown platform games officially launched the iGATE plan and started accepting developer applications. Ding Yingfeng, vice president of Netease Games, said that Netease plans to expand in the field of mini game products and is prepared for the development of the mini game market. In Ding Yingfeng's view, although the lightweight game market is growing, the demand of game users has not been met. Netease is based on this requirement and has begun to expand into mini games.
Unlike the previous two, Jiucheng combines the competition for developer resources with its layout in the mobile internet field. With the investment in AuroraFeint, Jiucheng obtained a minority stake and thus obtained the operating rights of OpenFeint in China. OpenFeint is a mobile game social platform developed by the American company AuroraFeint. Regarding the significance of introducing OpenFeint to China, Shen Guoding, vice president of Jiucheng and general manager of the wireless internet division, believes that it is mainly to assist developers in transforming their game products from standalone to "light web games", thereby increasing user stickiness, consumption rate, and playability.
In fact, in addition to the most popular mini games, Tencent has undoubtedly achieved the most in the field of mini games. Although Tencent, currently ranked first, has a rich product line, its performance in 2010 was mainly in casual games and competitive games. Relying on the powerful interpersonal relationship platform of QQ, "Dungeon & Fighter", "CrossFire", "King of the Battlefield", "QQ Speed", "QQ Dance", and others have performed well.
According to Ding Yingfeng's analysis, although everyone is making efforts in the layout of mini games, there are still significant differences. Shanda is a flash game platform mainly designed for standalone games. Netease's iTown mini game platform mainly focuses on the development of client interactive games, with more interactive games and greater openness.
It is also understood that in addition to the early layouts of industry giants, new business models are also being tried in China. "Youxi World", the 3D virtual world with the largest number of online interactions in China, as a Chinese version of Second Life, also plans to make efforts on open platforms. According to its CEO Ye Peng, "Youxi World" tends to be an open network platform that provides third parties and ordinary users with the ability to develop interactive applications on-site. This makes "Youxi World" similar to Apple's App Store or Facebook's open platform, with commonalities in business models.
Behind the smoke of war
As the gaming giants join the competition for mini game developers, the mini game market naturally becomes filled with smoke.
Industry insiders believe that once Tencent's mini game developer platform goes online, it will undoubtedly have an impact on traditional mini game platforms such as 4399 and 7K7K, and also affect the previous layouts of Shanda, Netease, Jiucheng, further intensifying the gunpowder smell in the mini game market.
At the beginning of 2011, the battle for the copyright of mini games had already begun. Tencent was first accused of "infringing" on Maqiu, pirating thousands of mini games and maliciously blocking ads. Tencent did not respond directly to this accusation. Almost at the same time, Tencent sued Beijing Beiwei Communication Technology Co., Ltd., claiming that its game "QQ Landlord" was counterfeited by the company. On the surface, it seems to be a copyright protection lawsuit, but in reality, it is a manifestation of the giants competing for the mini game market and engaging in direct confrontation.
In addition to the business model, details such as the distribution method and proportion are also crucial. Shanda Games' Maqiu Network basically follows the 50-50 revenue sharing model with developers. In Netease's iGATE plan, in addition to announcing the establishment of an online fund, it will also share profits with developers based on the game's operation and developer's benefits. For different games, developers will have different profit models based on revenue sharing and online time.
What game developers are most concerned about is, of course, who can help them make money and live better. In a sense, players don't need to care about how the people behind that angry bird are doing, but the development platform needs to take responsibility for game developers. This is the key to winning the mini game battle.