When asked about the adjustment of overseas strategy at the first extraordinary general meeting of shareholders in 2022, Gibit mentioned that in addition to reserved IP products, the company can only establish projects for global topics, and said it is a "mandatory requirement".
In the capital market , Jibitman was nicknamed "Moutai in the game world", because the stock price is high and stable, and the background is the stable business growth: the flagship product "Ask the Way Mobile Game" was the bottom of the performance, and then "'s Strongest Snail " and "Yi Mind Freedom" became popular.
What’s amazing is that whether it is "Ask the Way Mobile Game" or "Yi Mind Freedom", Jibit’s successful products in recent years have strong domestic market attributes. Therefore, when dividing pure domestic market products at the shareholders' meeting, Jibit's words and deeds are a bit incomprehensible.
cannot understand, but it can be understood.
The reason is no different. To this day, game manufacturers are no longer willing to make products that are only targeted at the domestic market.
version number is too small, it is hard to cook without rice
html On November 16, at Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center, the annual award ceremony of Honor of Kings was held as scheduled. Surprisingly, the real-time demonstration of the derivative game "Code Name Dawn" stole the limelight of the competition and flooded the screen among players.
A day later, Xindong's product of the same type, the platform fighting game "Flash Party", announced the opening of reservations, but the launch market is not China, but the first stop for domestic manufacturers to go overseas: Japan.
"Flash Party" is a platform fight game developed by Xindong. The gameplay is inspired by the popular console game " Nintendo Star Fight ", but it has made a lot of innovations and improvements for the mobile terminal. The current name of the Japanese server is "New Feeling Fight Mobile Game".
Since 2021, Xindong has allowed "Flash Party" to participate in the TapTap bonfire test, and has accumulated a group of core users. Last year, the GameLook reported quoting comments from industry insiders: "If you don't do this game, then there will probably be no one else in the industry to do it." The purpose of re-introduction of the old story is to show that "Flash Party" originally wanted to be launched in China first.
In the past two days, some investors have communicated and speculated on the investment community snowball that the practice of "Flash Party" is overseas first and then domestically because it is difficult to apply for version number .
At the first half of the year of 2021, Xindong CEO Huang Yimeng also said that whether "Flash Party" will be commercialized overseas depends on the progress of the version number.
Last year, game version number was temporarily suspended for 4 months. According to GameLook statistics, the number of game versions issued in 2021 was 755, and the total number of decreased by 46.26% year-on-year compared with . Because there are fewer version numbers, it makes sense not to do the domestic market.
User empathy, new categories seize attention
But obviously, the version number is not the only factor.
htmlOn November 17, Sensor Tower released the global mobile game revenue list for December 2021 as usual. GameLook checked and found that among the 10 most valuable mobile games, 4 of them are domestic games, but none of them rely solely on the Chinese market.
For example, PUBG Mobile merged the revenue of " Peace Elite ", of which "Peace Elite" China's IOS market revenue accounted for 68.3%; " Genshin Impact " is a global server game, and the revenue of the Chinese iOS market accounted for 28%, while the revenue of the US market also accounted for 23.4%.
" Honor of Kings " also includes overseas market revenue. The most extreme example is "Free Fire" developed by 111dots Studio, a team under Garena, which is also a Chinese-made game with 100% overseas revenue.
After watching the existing game, let’s take a look at the new projects and new products established by major manufacturers in recent years.Since "Genshin Impact" and "Fantasy Tower" succeeded in 2020 and 2021, the second dimension that takes over the three major markets of China, Japan and South Korea has become a new wealth code. Survival games that are strongly related to the common end-of-life themes of the second dimension have become increasingly popular in recent years. The direct impact of emerging categories like mushrooms after a rain is that the number of MMO products concentrated in traditional martial arts and fairy tales is rapidly decreasing, and to be more precise, the rapid reduction of MMO products that have gained a certain influence and income. Previously, GameLook mentioned that 2021, with only one popular MMO new product " Swordsman World 3", is enough to be called the MMO Little New Year.
Due to user interests, Generation Z, which represents the backbone of the game industry, has a preference for rapid shift to emerging categories such as the second dimension. TapTap's 2021 annual report also shows that the post-90s and post-00s no longer have the cold to the martial arts and fairy tales specially provided by China, and none of the top 5 popular products are martial arts and fairy tales products.
Changes in player interest have led to the decline in manufacturers' enthusiasm for project establishment, and they are no longer willing to develop martial arts and fairy tales products. So we see that the popular fairy tales in the past two years are often from independent developers or small and medium-sized teams, such as "The Great Immortal Cultivation Simulator" and "The Eight Wilderness of Guigu", rather than the original large manufacturers. This is the direct result of the large manufacturers turning their attention to emerging categories and vertical tracks with greater opportunities.
The global era should adhere to Chinese culture
Even if you put aside "Genshin Impact" and look at the popular new products in 2021, whether it is " League of Legends Mobile Game ", "Golden Shovel Battle", Harry Potter: Magic Awakening", or even " Eternal Haunt ", you have not put eggs in a basket in the Chinese market.
The background of it seems to be well known. The major manufacturers represented by Tencent and NetEase have established strategic goals of half of the domestic and overseas markets. Chaoxiguangnian President Yan Su also mentioned at an internal sharing meeting in July last year that overseas flows account for nearly 80% of Chaoxiguangnian's total flows, and it has not yet been included in the developer of " Endless Confrontation " acquired by him.
The official team of "Glory of Kings" once told GameLook, "The foundation of Kings IP is based on the core of Chinese cultural." But it seems that before we know it, Chinese game developers are becoming less and less productive, purely Chinese culture.
Tencent Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi and GameLook explained the reason. In 2017, when " PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds " became popular all over the world (including China), he believed that Chinese players and global players were already very in line with each other.
high level of alignment seems to preview the popularity of similar products around the world. It was the earliest SLG products such as " Kingdom Era " and " Ten Thousand Kingdoms Awakening ", and then the birth of the open world "Genshin Impact".
Compared to "Glory of Kings" with Chinese culture as the background, "Genshin Impact" practice is more like creating a "global village", drawing inspiration from different civilizations in the world, and cleverly spreading Chinese traditional culture with games as a carrier. For example, the Peking Opera sing "Goddess Split View" recently praised by major official media as a "new cultural symbol".
Of course, at the moment when more and more products are globalized, not all manufacturers are starting from the perspective of the global market. For example, "Black Myth: Wukong", which adheres to the pure Chinese culture as the background, can also attract the attention of players all over the world.
Is it integrated into Chinese culture with an international mindset, or is it insisting that the nation is the world? It’s just two choices that lead to the same goal, and there is no right or wrong. However, once one item has an overwhelming advantage, the other item is even unwilling to do or even dare not do it, and some difficulties or problems must have occurred.
China is the world's largest game market. The market is influenced by various factors such as policy supervision, user preferences, and trends of the times. The healthy and prosperous market also requires diversified products and atmospheres.Whether it is society, players or manufacturers themselves, it may be time to consider that we should give pure Chinese cultural games more tolerance. Before we go to the world, we should be kind to ourselves.
