"The Glory of Kings" how to become a household name of the "bomb" game.

After reviewing the development of Tencent game in recent 15 years, there are three important nodes, which is crucial for the continuous growth of Tencent's game business:
2007, Tencent game confirmed to break through the category strategy to open up the game market;
2010: Tencent game established the depth of operation as a means of cultivation of fine methods of game depth operation to change the small public;
2013, with forward-looking thinking, decisively to the business resources and the focus of business from the end of the business to move to the hand tour business.



Tencent game history and milestones


2007: Thinking of subdivision category
Top-quality strategy to ensure that the first place in the breakdown category


Tencent made up its mind in 2007 to aggressively expand its gaming business and enter the game market on a massive scale, but one key question that needs to be considered at that time is where the market's entry point is.



Mr. Ma Xiaoyi and Qing Teng University students photo


We have also tried to go along the grand, giant, NetEase and other development of the road to catch up, but we all know, along the road to the success of the opponent to catch up with the opponent is difficult, even can be said to be dying. Therefore, we thought that Tencent must find its own way to achieve the curve overtaking.



The thought of subdividing the category: The nature of the world's players is the same



2007: Thinking of subdivision category


Looking back over 2007 years of market structure and subdivision category distribution, the dominant category in the Chinese market is RPG (role-playing game), while the U.S. market as a representative of the global mature game market, in fact, the category is very rich, there are sports, racing, music, shooting and other types of different. At that time, the question before us was: Why is the Chinese market different from other markets?


I asked myself a question, when you were a regular player, is not only playing a strange upgrade. Not really, we played all kinds of games since we were kids. With a careful analysis of the player's inner needs, the team concludes with a different industry conclusion-the world's user nature is the same, and the difference is actually the environment.


We believe that we cannot be bound by the so-called common sense. The Chinese player's user nature is the same as that of the rest of the world. So, at that time, our team jumped out of the most competitive RPG field, in other categories to find opportunities for Tencent game to explore the starting point of business.



"Play" is the industry's most important driving force



Three elements of game category development


Why do we use categories as a starting point? Here comes the essential question of a gaming industry: what is the driving force behind the game industry.


We believe that the gaming industry has three of the most important drivers:
Story/IP. Story/IP is the flesh and blood of this industry, used to fill the industry, so that the industry horizontal development.
Play. Including shooting, action, MOBA, sports, racing and so on different categories. Play is the innovation of the industry (revolutionary) factors, the industry is moving forward depends on the evolution of the play.
Technology. For example, from the PC age to the mobile era, as well as future AI, VR and so on. Technology is the industry's destructive (disruptive) development factor, with few occurrences, and it is likely that there will be a major technological evolution every 10-15 years.


To grasp the overall progress of the industry, we need to constantly fill the flesh and blood, with more horizontal expansion of the game story, but at the same time to be very active with the play to promote business development, so as to continuously expand the business map.


For the key drivers of these three industries, we believe that there is a need to adopt a differentiated approach. The 2007 Tencent game found the most important entry point, but also officially one of these three drivers, that is, play.



Game Category: The engine of industry advance


When we carefully analyze the history of the entire gaming industry, we can see that every two or three years, there will be a new play. The whole industry's income is rising, the overall number of users is increasing, because these new play is constantly pushing the industry forward. We think that the game team to do is to comply with the trend in China so that the trend can also be synchronized with the world, which is the overall thinking of Tencent strategy at the time.

The methodology of Subdivision Category: "The highest"

2007 to determine the category to cut into the industry, specific each category how to do it. What are some of the factors that can be explored behind the scenes?


Shooting game as an example, in fact, as early as 2003, the domestic company launched a shooting game, but failed. Industry believes that the Chinese market is not suitable for the development of shooting games, technology is not available, players do not like. Is this conclusion correct? If that's the answer, then how do you want to be a popular shooter? After careful study, our team has drawn some different views and conclusions from the industry consensus:


Before the game product quality is not high, when a market segment is not open, need to have strong enough strength, that is enough good products and enough resources, the door pushed away. Before the quality of the product is not good enough resources, so the Chinese shooting game market door is not really open.


After opening this door, how to hold the door after the market is another crucial issue.


The nature of the gaming industry, to some extent, has something in common with the Internet. Game industry is the digital content industry, marginal cost is very low, including the marginal cost of production, user access to the marginal cost, on the other hand, the game industry market information flow is very high, the market concentration is also very high.



The key to success: the most


Take football games for example. The first is FIFA, and the second is winning eleven. We know very little about the third place. Take the global PC game for example, often the 12th place occupies the mainstream mass market, add up usually can occupy the whole game type of more than 90% of the market share.


If you want to be in a category, both to open up new markets, but also to keep the existing market, you need to ensure that you must be in the first or second place.



The understanding of the fine: from small to mainstream, through the breakdown category, prosperous


A good game first is a cultural product


We can accept a good game at the beginning of the IPO relatively small, but this game should have the potential of the mainstream, its core play must meet the emotional appeal of most people.




Rise Posture
Takeaway


A good game product is a cultural product, a good electric dealer is also a culture, all roads pass "culture", the highest form of business is culture.


A good game product is a cultural product first, can impress the user is actually the emotional resonance behind the game.



Small audience → Mainstream


The essence of man and man is the same, and the difference is the environment. If you are unfamiliar with a particular type of game, you do not experience its playful and emotional resonance. In the case of sci-fi backgrounds, because of the differences in growth and living conditions, many people may not be interested in sci-fi themes. But as the environment changes, when there is enough time and enough friends to teach you to play with, you may feel the resonance


The environment can change slowly, and the team can even try to cultivate the environment, so that the environment can adapt to the product, to wait for opportunities.


Make product decisions and operations decisions, always pick the hardest one.


To do any type of game product, we think, should be 80% as an ongoing effort to market share goals. With this goal as the direction, keep releasing new content, put new market resources, and constantly strive to increase market share.



"Penetrate" the breakdown category


When making decisions on products and operations, if there are multiple decisions to choose from, pick the hard one and slowly raise the competition threshold.


Once you start, make a product of evergreen


Once all products have been started, it is necessary to make a evergreen (Evergreen) product. Tencent does not encourage teams to do short life-time products. Products to the market, to do a good job of 5-10 years of preparation for the operation. In the gaming industry, a game usually lasts only six to two years.



A prosperous, flourishing, flourish


2007, 2008, Tencent game on the basis of a series of ideas to operate the game business, cultivate the game market to do. By the year 2011, the entire Chinese game market has become a very rich market for category and play. Fortunately, apart from the RPG category, Tencent has gained a leading position in other major segments of the category market.



Results: The introduction of fine, rich category


Tencent game's first wave of growth, mainly depends on this strategy-take the road subdivision category, do this game field of fine.


2010: Deep operation to change the small public
Multi-level user operation method


2007,2008 years, Tencent game by subdividing the category strategy to obtain initial success, this mainly because some game strategy played a role. But the game in addition to these games, there are also what can be expanded space. How to make the business more and more deep.


Very fortunate, 2010 years or so, the "League of Heroes" This product fully educate the team and guide the team to the depth of the operation of this road to think.




Deep operation changes Small audience


MOBA (Multiplayer online tactical games) Formerly a very small market, the player is difficult to get started. At that time only the very core level of users will play such a game, because of the need for a large number of learning costs.


And now the players have a lot of raiders, videos, tutorials, know how each role in the game play. But the team believes that the user is the same, but the environment is not the same, the need to learn the cost is too high, need to have too much co-ordination in the inside, the need for network conditions good enough to know a lot of things.


Seed Players


Moba the starting point of the game is very small, the team needs to dig the product step by step. The first step, the summer of 2009, the team found the first wave of seed users.


These users have played Moba before. Not only played, but also their own research, have their own ideas, have a strong ability to summarize and analyze, to find the game behind the core elements.


What good is that? They really split the core of the game of the League of Heroes. These seed users, like a group of researchers, deconstruct the whole game from the key ideas and ideas of the game to the positioning of various roles and tactics.



Multi-level user operations


The game has been developed in the traditional sense, but it's not really a finished product. "Finished" can be directly to the consumer to play, but the earliest consumers to play this product is very difficult.


More players are required to participate in reproduction in order to slowly make the finished product. So until the mass market gamers came in, the team thought the product was a finished item. Even before the first test to introduce a core player, in fact, in the production process.


2013: Firmly and rapidly transfer the focus of business
Enter the Hand tour, select Boutique, to "quality" as the first



Look at the right, put the ruthless


In the second half of 2012, the Tencent game team has a very deep thinking and discussion about "How to do the Hand tour". At that time, hand tour in China's market share is very small, mobile phones can develop how fast also do not know, looks from the screen size, user operation and other aspects, hand tour is not so organic will become a real mainstream game equipment.



2013: Whether the hand tour is the next wave


For the development of technology, practitioners should always keep their attention, and when the outbreak node arrives, the team is going to make a quick decision. October 2012, the team began to assume that at least the next five years, mobile phones will become a very important platform for the game, which may one day be more important than the PC.


It's OK to watch, put it down, slow down a bit. So although compared with the industry peers, Tencent Game started to start the business time later, but today to see Tencent's hand tour business is still successful.



Choice of quality, quality first


When Tencent began to start the tour business, there is a thinking in front of the team, how to deal with the third party ecological problems.

There are a lot of places to think about. The precedent to be wary of is "Atari impact". Tencent game in the mobile business to adopt the method is "boutique strategy", selective opening some boutique products to Tencent platform to publish.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------