This article is reproduced from the Media | X Technology Lab
What is the most unexpected and at the same time particularly profitable product of the Chinese Internet? Perhaps, it is this "Happy Consumption" that many people are playing, such a humble domestic leisure game, with an annual income of up to 1.4 billion yuan and more than 800 million users.
Such magical things do not only happen in China, in Europe and the United States, consumer fun is also popular, "Candy Crush" is a super big IP with a total revenue of more than 10 billion US dollars, in Japan, "Zhilong Maze" is also a phenomenon-level mobile game with a total revenue of more than 8 billion US dollars.
Some people say that the end of the universe is Tieling, and the end of the handsome man is Zhao Benshan, so to speak, I see the end of the game industry, probably it is the elimination of fun.
Here is the X Technology Lab that is curious about all the unknowns, the mini game is fun, why make money so much?
Tetris, Doctor Mario, Zuma, Lianlian, Gem Maze and other classic games, as well as last year's explosive "Synthetic Watermelon", can be counted as this category.
Eliminating the game's big brother "Tetris", each platform sold a total of 495 million copies, which was an important factor in the hot sale of Nintendo GB handhelds that year. Foreign countries are now even boycotting Russian vodka, but it seems that no one has heard of anyone who has made up their minds to boycott Tetris.
There are many experts from the psychological point of view of the analysis, the elimination of the game can cater to the user's potential compulsion psychology, can give the user the most timely output feedback, allow the user to master the game with the simplest rules, etc., in short, it has a variety of addictive features.
However, in addition to Tetris, other elimination game items may have a large number of players, but the ability to earn money is not too strong. There are also many reasons, such as low development thresholds, many similar competitors, and the flood of pirated resources. Anyway, in the PC era, this kind of game must be developed by some people to play, but at most it is to make a little money, and it cannot be compared with those big IP.
Lived like this for twenty years, until the advent of the smartphone era. Jobs saved you guys, the babes who developed the elimination game. One of the most significant changes smartphones has made to the way people live is to fragment time.
When I was a child, I had to stay up until the weekend to play the computer, and the fool did not play CS but went to play Zuma, and now that the topic selection meeting is held, the fool does not play the game and listens to the colleagues to apply for the topic.
The big IP of the consumer game we began to mention, "Candy Crush" and "Zhilong Maze" are mobile games born in 2012, and the domestic "Happy Entertainment" was born in 2013 and landed on the mobile phone in 2014, and the mobile payment that has been popularized with the smart phone era has also solved the problem of mini-game monetization to a certain extent.
For example, "Candy Crush" was launched more than a year ago, and in-app sales reached $1.3 billion. There is also a cold knowledge, the King Studios and Blizzard, which developed "Candy Crush", belong to the Activision Blizzard Group, and their latest financial report shows that King, who mainly earns money from consumption, has completely crushed Blizzard in terms of revenue and monthly active figures. Alas, Blizzard, don't say anything...
In short, the ecology and tools are there, and then can not make money is their own reasons, do not rely on the environment is not good, you are the environment ah?
Having said that, in addition to the fun, the small game that exploded on the smartphone in the past was basically cold for a while, and even the "Candy Crush" that was killed overseas was not too good in China. Why? The answer is the clichéd "operations."
For the simplest example, "Candy Crush" 13, 14 years in the absence of domestic agents, can also be downloaded directly from the Apple App Store, but domestic players want krypton gold is very troublesome, on the one hand, the App Store can only bind credit card payments, on the other hand, recharge at least 6 yuan, there is no smaller option.
Therefore, in the pool of mobile games, the quality of the game of the consumer music developer can only determine the lower limit of revenue, and the operation strategy determines the upper limit of the company's revenue. Let's take a specific look at the operation tricks of "Happy And Happy".
Wang Haining, founder of Happy Elements, the parent company of Happy Match, once said that their game payment rate is less than 2%, and half of the paying users will not spend more than 6 yuan a year.
In other words, less than 1% of Krypton players. Don't be fooled by this number, though. The kryptonian logic of the elimination is very simple, the difficulty of the level will increase with the depth of the game, and players will often encounter the situation of passing the level one step away, which is comparable to the last hundred million knives of xixi. The game also has a streak mechanic, and once the streak is terminated, some of the rewards will be invalidated.
Intimately, if the player does not want to fall short, there must be a way to scan the code to pay to understand. There is also a way to not spend money, that is, to watch advertisements. The style of painting is probably like this.
Of course, there are always people who feel that their skills are good and they don't need kryptonite gold. Oh, friends, do you know how many levels "Happy And Happy" has? 5000 levels. Anyway, tobacco, alcohol, and entertainment, these addictive things, I advise you not to be too confident in your self-control.
The kryptonite threshold for entertainment is very low, and you can get 100 gold coins for 1 dollar during the event, and 5 energy bottles for 1 dollar. Let's say, this year, can 1 dollar buy more happiness? Yili bitter coffee popsicles are sold for 3 pieces in Beijing, friends.
Although it is said that the silver (sub) recharge is small, but the silver (people) that cannot be recharged is more.
There are 870 million registered users of Happy Match, and currently there are 120 million monthly active users. And it should be noted that the user group of consumer fun is different from other popular games. According to third-party data, in June 2021, the number of female users was 88.61 million, accounting for more than 73%, and the average monthly usage time was 314 minutes.
OpPO's mobile game report shows that the favorite game of the post-60s crowd is also "Happy And Happy". It is almost common sense that women's spending power is higher than that of men, but what is unexpected is that there are reports that the spending power of middle-aged and elderly people is also very high, and the per capita game recharge amount after 60 is three times that of post-00s.
At this point, we can outline the general route of the wealth-making strategy of "Happy And Happy": the kryptonite threshold is low enough to attract many people to take the first step of krypton, so that they have the opportunity to develop into krypton players. On this basis, the huge user base hides female users and middle-aged and elderly users with high consumption power, which also allows 1% of heavy krypton players to have the ability to contribute very high revenue.
In 2017 alone, Happy Consumption achieved an annual revenue of 1.458 billion yuan, equivalent to more than 100 million yuan per month.
This is not the end, in order to serve these users, "Happy And Happy" continues to innovate in the regular level design and activities, maintaining a sense of freshness, and there will be a leather and leather copywriting in each version update. You can feel it and see if it is more inclined to male users or female users. For middle-aged and elderly players, they have also launched a 24-hour telephone service to answer the questions of middle-aged and elderly players. You say it doesn't make money.
Speaking of this, I think of the model when Pinduoduo came out a few years ago, and the business was done outside the five rings, which made many people shout that they couldn't understand it. In fact, the world is so big, hidden in the hidden corner of the unexpected big business and not only fight a lot, not to consume fun.
For example, it may be difficult for you to imagine that the app used by middle-aged and elderly people to dance square dance can have 200 million users and 100 million US dollars in financing; companies that make Ultraman cards for children can have an annual income of 3 billion yuan; simple landlord games can have an annual turnover of 6 billion.
It is said that the landlord is also a big business in China, and if the number of likes is OK in this issue, we will find an opportunity to talk next month.
Needless to say, it's the hardest time making money today compared to every year of the past decade. Sometimes we even wonder if a good business like Taobao, which can sell products to everyone, still exists and can still be found.
But at least, selling some specific products to a specific group of users, making a certain amount of money, this opportunity is probably always there.