There is still a chance for a two-ended release
While many people think that "content-based" games are the mainstream of the industry, some manufacturers have dug up "gold" again in the volume market.
In the field of heavy games, 37 mobile game "Little Ant Country" and Shiyue Network "Chang'an Fantasy" are typical representatives; In the medium or casual game track, there are Howtengaco's "King of Salted Fish", Yi World's "I Am the Big Owner" and so on. These are all products with a monthly turnover of more than 100 million.
First of all, we have to admit that through the innovative integration of gameplay, the above products have a unique way in SLG, MMO, placement and other subdivisions. However, in the context of the increasing cost of acquiring customers per A on traditional buying platforms, how can these games operate stably through large-scale purchases?
Jingnui has mentioned in many articles such as "In the matter of mini game purchases, Tencent and Byte can't do without each other after all" that one of the changes in the game buying market pattern in 2023 is the rise of the "WeChat + Douyin" mini game buying model.
Mini games are free of installation and play-and-go, which lowers the threshold for players to contact the product. In addition, according to a number of game manufacturers, the cost of buying mini games is also several times lower than that of the app side. This may also be an important reason why "King of Salted Fish" has long dominated the top of the purchase list, but it can still maintain a healthy operation.
With the maturity of the WeChat mini game purchase model and the significant effect it brings, "App mini gamification" has also become an important distribution strategy for the main purchase game manufacturers. It is worth mentioning that there are also some manufacturers trying to take the road of "mini game App". It is reported that Haoteng Jiake's new work with a monthly turnover of more than 100 million - "Mad Knights" has recently launched an App version.
However, the core of the above information lies in the fact that whether it is "App Mini Gamification" or "Mini Game App", these game manufacturers are basically around the platform of "WeChat Mini Game".
At the recent WeChat Mini Game Developer Conference, Yuan Hao, senior operation director of 37 Mobile Games, said that Mini Game users are a sea of stars other than APP users. This is mainly reflected in three aspects: the huge mini game market; The mini game market continues to be in a blue ocean state; From the perspective of front-end and traffic management logic, the overlap between mini games and heavy games is quite low.
In addition, he also released the App+ Mini Game version of "Little Ant Country" according to 37 mobile games, and conducted a detailed analysis of the points that Mini Games need to pay attention to in the development stage, promotion stage and long-term operation stage. It is hoped that through successful cases, it will provide the industry with reference experience in mini game projects.
The following is the full text shared by Yuan Hao, senior operation director of 37 Mobile Games, slightly edited:
Fancy the three core competitiveness of mini games
About three years ago, 37 Mobile Games began to explore and experiment with the mini-game track. During this period, the dividends of the market were particularly large, and the company launched legendary games such as "Beacon Siege" and "Dragon Slayer Daybreak".
Then, 37 Mobile Games gradually carried out some attempts at Unity mobile game to mini game, such as "Puzzle Continent" and "One Knife Inheritance". In 2023, the company launched small game versions such as "Little Ant Country" and "Bright Adventure".
Among them, "Little Ant Country" is a heavy SLG mobile game. The game is a game that attracts users with the sense of ant nest simulation management, and then allows users to continue to play through the mature COK like framework. Therefore, its relative application scenarios are not so fragmented, and the demand for user social networking and online time is also very high.
However, after the release of the "Little Ant Country" APP game, we believe that such a theme and such gameplay are especially suitable for the small game track. Therefore, the team chose to use "Little Ant Country" to further dig into the mini game track.
We believe that the users of the mini game are a sea of stars other than the APP users. This is mainly reflected in three aspects:
First, the market is huge. At present, media competition is actually a competition centered on click-through rate, subject matter and creativity. This requires us to have the concept of acquiring customers and buying as the core of traffic management. And click-through rate, subject matter, and creativity are our core. With the development of the game market, the gap between theme and creativity will be further narrowed, so the high click rate of mini games will greatly help us compete in front-end media.
Second, the mini game market continues to be in a blue ocean state. If you observe the changes in the ranking of mini games, you will find that it is far inferior to the APP, and there are not many real explosive and masterpieces every year. This means that the density of user content acceptance is particularly low, and there is a lot of room for us to tap into.
Third, from the perspective of front-end and traffic operation logic, the overlap between mini games and heavy games is quite low. "Little Ant Country" is a promotion APP and a mini-game at the same time. However, from the data of bytes, the exposure repetition rate will not exceed 50%.
Based on these three points, 37 Mobile Game believes that the conversion link is faster, will gain a strong advantage, and can acquire a new group of users. In fact, when expanding the user circle, the APP package is getting bigger and bigger, because users have higher and higher requirements for the quality of heavy games. But for many casual users, they are not so sensitive to art quality, as long as the game feels right, it will be more effective than improving quality.
In addition, in the view of 37 Mobile Games, mini games can help the team find more fragmented and casual users. And the click-to-play format fits the fast-paced user base. Many users will have an impulsive behavior that is moved by advertising, that is, click-to-play can shorten the user's hesitation period and the conversion rate will be better.
Do a good job of WeChat mini game scoring in three steps
When a real heavy game is put into the WeChat ecosystem, how can we do a good job of localization tuning? In simple terms, it can be divided into three stages: the development phase, the promotion phase, and the long-term operation phase.
Memory optimization + resource optimization is the best solution in the development and transformation stage. The verification stage after conversion is now mainly through VTest for cloud testing. Generally, a project will do about 3-5 rounds of testing from the completion of the transfer to the launch, constantly looking for suitable problems.
After the performance optimization is completed and the go-live conditions are reached, we also need to pay attention to several key points:
Access subscription messages, "Little Ant Country" has a difference of more than 10% in the retention change of access and non-access subscription messages; The use of the sharing module is very critical to sharing fission in the WeChat mini game ecosystem, and the sharing rate of medium and heavy games can reach between 5-10; WeChat game circle operation, Mini Game users' content, information acquisition needs and channels, there is an essential difference from APP.
In the promotion stage, we must do two things:
Data analysis. We can check whether the target group is reasonable through the We background, and the We analysis platform can help us see the age, region, and gender distribution of the current imported users. Localization adjustments. The Mini Game ecology is different from the APP, and we need to make some adjustments according to the user behavior of the Mini Game.
Among them, how to localize the adjustment is the focus. For example, when "Little Ant Country" first went online, because the game was a COK like of the big server ecology, and the APK single ecological server was 50,000 people, the mini game also built an ecology according to 50,000 people at the beginning. However, in the operation stage, 37 mobile games encountered some problems, and the detailed number of active people was insufficient.
SLG is essentially a social gameplay, if there are not many people, the user participation rate of single server and cross-server will be low, and everyone will not be able to fight. Therefore, according to the reverse push of active users, we increased the ecology of the single server to 70,000 people, and after doing this, the payment increased by 10%.
In the second month of operation, the team encountered new problems. Because SLG relies on cross-server competition in the medium term, and the users of Mini Games are not liver enough, there is not much time to complete what we call community integration in the game. To this end, the team merged thousands of players in a team earlier, and increased the free migration of mini games from 60 days to 30 days, so that some players who can play can complete the integration through server migration faster. The end result is a more than 5% slower decline in retention trends and another 10% increase in payments.
In terms of the long-term operation of the game, due to the differences in users, we have also made many adjustments to the operation of the mini game version. Including in the brand, the Shenshu Cup uses a small game single-server battle, that is, the so-called cross-server battle is a single server to fight, and then the report of the Shenshu Cup is done separately in the game circle, in order to better cater to this group of users.
In addition, because the mini game is different from the APP user group, the commercialization model must also be adjusted.
Mini game commercialization is a dynamic process
On the APP side, the idea of conventional commercialization: the first step is to establish value awareness, and the second step is to push consumption points.
But on the mini game side, it should be simpler, that is, directly push paid products, through a particularly strong front-end UI to display and highlight prices, and form price cognition. Instead of instilling through game content, it is to establish value perception through vision.
In terms of specific commercialization adjustments, "Little Ant Country" does two things:
First, change the first charge time of the APK from 20 minutes to 5 minutes on the mini game. After the user enters, he only needs to simply pass the first step of the ant nest, and after recognizing the world of ants, we will launch some very gorgeous UI displays to guide players to pay.
Second, the first charge UI adjustment, pre-payment file promotion. "Little Ant Country" itself is an SLG gameplay, and those UIs of the original paid interface are not attractive enough for mini game users. After adjusting the UI for the target, the payment rate increased by more than 66%, and the payment level increased by 138%.
You may be curious, why is the payment rate high, and the magnitude can still increase? This goes back to the buying logic.
The faster our paid callbacks, the stronger our ability to plan to find users, which is a complementary relationship. After the first charge was accelerated, the payment rate increased, and then a new problem appeared. The users found in this way may not play after paying, so what if our purchase volume recovery cannot be returned? This requires us to think about one thing, how to better screen users?
The method we use is to upgrade the paid file, such as changing the first charge from 6 yuan to 12 yuan. When buying volume, feedback to the media platform, users who need to pay 12 yuan for the first charge, instead of only 6 yuan originally, of course, this may also be a game. After making these adjustments, we found that paying user retention increased by more than 10%, and paid ARPU increased by 25%, which means more than 10% increase in recycling.
However, new problems have also arisen, because the payment rate will decrease as the amount of payment increases. This will further cause the competitiveness of the front-end to decrease, and will form a negative flywheel, resulting in the inability to lead. In response to this, we chose to do the first charge of multiple gears, and changed the first charge to 6 yuan, 12 yuan, 30 yuan three gears.
The core idea of commercialization adjustment is closely related to the users found by the media. We have to constantly adjust to find the right group of players, which requires thousands of people and different plans to bring in users. When players see the paid interface, the price pushed is also different. After doing this, our overall payment rate increased by 50%, and the ARPU value continued to grow.
Here we talk about the commercialization of the first charge of "Little Ant Country" and the commercialization adjustment of the entire game, which is actually redone after a round of promotion and redone according to data feedback. The commercial adjustment of Mini Games is a dynamic process, which must be constantly adjusted according to changes in market traffic and the amount of materials purchased, only suitable for the moment, and there is no real satisfactory answer.
APP + Mini Game is released at both ends and new playing methods
Slightly different from other mini-games, "Little Ant Country" adopts the strategy of simultaneous distribution of APP + mini-game. So what should I pay attention to when buying small games and APP at the same time?
First, we believe that apps are users who can do higher value.
On SLG products, the ARPU value of the APP is more than 10 times that of the mini game, so the commercial design of the two-end distribution must be changed. But from the pyramid structure of the mini game, it can find a larger group, and users are suitable for high-frequency and low-value multiple payments, which is the core of commercial changes.
Second, doing a double-ended distribution requires the isolation of the population.
Specifically, even serving assets also needs to be isolated. We can't use the same material to push Mini Games and APP, or promote Mini Games and Apps at the same time. In order to prevent the plans of the app on the media from being squeezed out by the mini-game, the isolation of the crowd must be guaranteed.
Version isolation is also important. Especially for heavy games, the follow-up ecology is very important. Mini games and APP to play to the back is to play together, but at the same time to be compatible to the early stage, according to the mini game to transform the commercialization of the game, you need to grasp the rhythm, and consider the compatibility problem in the later stage. The problem of the version needs to be considered, including how to configure the game and adjust the different commercialization of different regions.
Finally, the future planning of the mini game is also briefly mentioned. On the Little Ant Country mini-game version, we will continue to improve. As a game publisher, we have explored some experience in mini games, we hope to do a good job with more research and development of mini games this track, and welcome everyone to find 37 mobile games to exchange and cooperate. Our goal is to create a matrix of medium games, focusing on finding some product categories that are more suitable for fragmentation.
Of course, in this process, we are also thinking, a medium and heavy game, how to do a good mini-game?
The game performance adaptation just talked about actually requires a certain amount of effort from developers. We hope to explore a possibility, such as whether we can do cloud games through the combination of cloud games and mini games, to help developers go deeper into this track faster and at zero cost. I can explore this direction with you in the future, thank you.