Start to taste stale from infancy? On the current situation of domestic game crowdfunding (the next)

Basic Facts

In the upper part of this topic, we see two small-scale teams and crowdfunding, from one side reflects the game crowdfunding in the domestic part of the status quo. In order to clarify the complex logic behind these problems, love to play network interview with the Mo Dot Network CEO Huang Victory , hope to get more information from him, answer the game crowdfunding just into China soon began to "stale" deep cause and effect.

He first talked about the domestic game environment and the characteristics of crowdfunding: " at present the main domestic popular is the inside purchase game, this kind of game to do crowdfunding, a big obstacle is the pay point to move forward two times." Move forward the first time is to pay one hand to deliver, move forward the second time to the crowdfunding. for Chinese consumers, especially gamers, the barriers to this model are actually quite large. ”

So to speak, the domestic until recent years with the popularization of intelligent terminals into free hand-travel era, the game is really in the social level became hot up. This kind of game because the initial use cost nearly 0, so can quickly gather a large number of leisure players. And regardless of the domestic and foreign very low pay rate shows that most of these people in the "game needs to spend money" concept is very strange, specific to mainland China, not willing to pay for the game is obviously the PC single game piracy rampant vestiges the embodiment-a little bit of mouse can download to its own price dozens of, Hundred Yuan game, and the basic content sorta, why do you want to spend money specifically for the game?

Manufacturers with "in-purchase" to a certain extent to solve the game's profitability, to the game crowdfunding occasions, but also into the years ago was proved in the mainland does not work in the first hand delivery of the dead end, while the advance of the pay point will further expand the risk. Some crowdfunding projects on the line when even the basic concepts are not finalized, players need to bear the psychological and purse double worry.

Objectively speaking, there are spare cash in the country and have "hit the reward" mood, that is, to raise the risk of a sober understanding of people, in the player group is particularly rare, coupled with the "crowdfunding" concept of the birth of the time is still shallow, a lot of people on its lack of understanding, a variety of subjective and objective causes of the game are now

Low threshold worries

In this case, the quality and authenticity of these projects on crowdfunding platforms is particularly important. For example, "Earth ol" at first glance seemingly not feasible projects have been widely questioned recently, "crowdfunding fraud", "crowdfunding scam" and other words also often appear in the major media, about the project qualification audit and review process, is a lot of players are very concerned about the issue.

"We are mainly divided into preliminary examination and review, the first trial mainly includes the content and the qualification two aspects. The former of course is to see whether the content is pirated, whether there are yellow gambling poison elements, the latter's audit mainly look at my hand-held ID photo, this is an individual application, of course, business application is to look at a variety of business license, there are two things basically no problem.

"Such a low-threshold mechanism is aimed at attracting more developers to put their work on the crowdfunding platform. You are willing to go on , but in the end there is no one willing to pay, more or rely on the production side of the expression. By being truthful, someone is willing to pay the bill, and if you cheat, then you are liable. The core is information disclosure, so long as the information is true, then the right of choice should be handed over to the public. ”

The reason why the entry conditions are so low is that Huang Shenli think the biggest cause is the importance of giving people opportunities. There are also cases in Kickstarter that have been successful after several years of crowdfunding.

"After all, the industry is now mainly relying on a bunch of young people to innovate, each team has its own creative point, which is the key reason for us to set a low threshold, because no one can say whether a project can eventually be made." "

The benefits of low thresholds are needless to say, but the attendant concerns about the credibility of the platform are justified. Being able to be displayed at the end of a crowdfunding site seems to indicate that the project has a certain potential or development space, at least in traditional view. Once the "not reliable" project too much, the reputation of the platform itself will cause some damage? Huang Shenli is very clear about the problem.

"We think we can accept that." First of all we do not rely on this thing speculation, and secondly, we also have their own small group, the properties of the project has an overall grasp. Some so-called controversial works you are willing to go on, we can choose not to do the recommendation.

Second, when the number of items go up, the small group can play a certain role in guiding, which is an effective risk control. so our wind control is not by raising the project threshold, but by using these means to fine-tune. you just said the brand ah, the credibility of these, the essence is a wind control problem. ”

Of course, real risk-control measures are far more than simple. In order to protect the interests of investors, the network set up a very "hate" of the rules: after the project fundraising success, the promoter can only get the total amount of 50% , and so he according to the project description of the various returns to supporters, then 30% , the supporters receive a return and confirm that the site will not call the remaining 20% to the project sponsor. and, in addition to the project's unsuccessful automatic refunds, supporters can take their investment back at any time before the project is over.

and similar to such a crowdfunding project basic common sense, because the crowdfunding concept in the domestic visibility is too low, many people do not know. Of course, the crowdfunding model itself is too short of time, the propaganda of the platform is not in place obviously there is a certain responsibility. However, as the game crowdfunding products gradually completed, more and more cognitive, I believe that the public will be more aware of the risks of crowdfunding, know what they have to bear, and which do not have to worry too much.

What role does crowdfunding play?

Crowdfunding platform is a financing channel on the surface, but in reality it plays the role of Communication Subdivision user group (player), production team and recessive investor.

"First of all, there may be a lot of independent game developers themselves immature, lack of experience from development to promotion, the second many teams do not have market awareness, they just do a game they like, just know that there are people like this kind of game on the market, but the communication with the audience is not established, receive feedback from the players, It made them feel very uncomfortable. ”

The significance of the crowdfunding platform is to build a bridge that will allow the producer and the player a chance to communicate before the game is finally formed. This will provide timely feedback, including the number of audiences, the game form, the specific way to play the comments and suggestions and so on. I interviewed a number of production teams have said that this is more convenient than the former behind closed doors too much, the player's opinion regardless of whether or not, can help and influence the development of the game to a large extent.

At the same time, if a project in the crowdfunding stage evaluation is not high or crowdfunding failure, manufacturers can also be interrupted in time to prevent further losses. In the traditional game development, there is no similar communication channels and opportunities. And there are many examples of these potential audiences that are likely to be the ones who will eventually participate in crowdfunding.

The second role of crowdfunding is to advertise products to potential investors. without a systematic and sustained fund from the investor, it is impossible to get the product done by a single crowdfunding. combined with the various risks mentioned above and the restriction of the players ' consuming ability, the mainstream independent game project would have been difficult to attract a large number of users to take out the real gold and silver support, the most optimistic situation can only raise a starting capital.

As long as the crowdfunding platform, there are a group of venture capitalists are constantly looking for promising projects. According to Huang Shenli, although many of the teams from their platform are not getting much of the investment, the amount of crowdfunding projects is certainly not comparable.

All know the small team to find money is certainly one of the biggest difficulties, and crowdfunding platform to raise the channel of 2 more--the crowdfunding project itself and the investors behind, so theoretically this is a very promising business model.

How to view the game crowdfunding of e-commerce website

Put almost finished products on the crowdfunding site for so-called "crowdfunding", and set up such as 10, 20 of the same product returns (and Kickstarter only allowed to buy a copy of the product) and so on, which in many people's view is just a disguised promotion, "crowdfunding" It has become a new way for marketers to conduct marketing campaigns, and it is clear that there is a world of difference between the feelings and the sense of purpose of overseas. This is why this feature report will be "stale" as the theme. After all, the influence of the e-commerce website can not be ignored, the light to see published in the home page of the book information, the total amount of items added together enough to bluff people, such "crowdfunding" will produce what negative impact?

"This question points at both ends. First of all, I think this kind of consumer-type crowdfunding a little meaning , including games, hardware and so on, basically is to come up with a complete thing in the promotion. But on the other hand they are also tiger, because the KPIs (key performance indicators) of these e-commerce sites are too high, and even if they want to step up from the basics, the objective conditions are not allowed. And crowdfunding in the domestic and indeed in a very early stage, the limits of consumption capacity in this. ”

A product is in progress to 10%, 20% or 80%, 90% when the crowdfunding, different manufacturers have their own different understanding, e-commerce may be in order to ensure the success rate and reduce risk, will try to select a number of large manufacturers to cooperate, so regardless of platform or audience can be more assured that But this form and the traditional understanding of "crowdfunding" certainly is very different, and the network because the threshold set low, can attract a variety of products and projects, from the content to form also go similar to the Kickstarter and other offshore crowdfunding site routes, but relatively speaking, the risk of controllability may be inferior to other platforms.

This is why the platform's project success rate has been less than 50%, and the e-commerce site's projects are rarely the cause of failure. Which is more suitable for the domestic market, more in line with the concept of crowdfunding, presumably the players have steelyard in their hearts.

how to treat the domestic crowdfunding prospects

The question I asked every one of the respondents, based on different positions and encounters, they gave different answers. The cool Sky although because of this matter got the attention, but the attendant doubts and the crowdfunding project itself embarrassed fund-raising amount makes him not optimistic about crowdfunding in the domestic development, and the teammate game himself admits that because the crowdfunding has received too many surprises, their optimism is obvious for a reason. Huang Shenli also have their own views on this.

He first mentioned that even if the American Kickstarter is not very mature, and the game crowdfunding both at home and abroad, are facing the fundamental problem of jumping tickets .

Cause of course a lot of reasons to skip tickets, not only the platform of the independent game, the world's major manufacturers who do not dare to ensure that their products will never be postponed. But the crux of the crowdfunding game is that a large part of the product's content needs to come from the players involved in the investment, because everyone is an investor, so the producers generally do not refuse to join some of the popular voices, but the number of features that the game needs to include is likely to exceed the original expectations of the creator. in the traditional game production mode, the investors generally do not interfere with the specific content of the game, they often focus more attention on the return on investment, cost control and other commercial aspects.

We all know that this world in addition to Blizzard has this strength, but also really can not find a few manufacturers to let players calmly treat the game extension, not to mention here is the player (investor) in the product before it has assumed a certain loss of risk of the crowdfunding game.

This key point in addition to the domestic two yuan economic structure formed by the huge consumption of regional differences, let Huang Shenli think at least to endure a 2, 3 years, until like "carp" such a successful product, success stories have been launched, such as their specialized crowdfunding platform and even the entire game crowdfunding industry will have a more clear situation. However, he is very certain that crowdfunding's current channel-setting role can effectively increase the enthusiasm of all parties involved in this matter.

At the end of the interview, Huang Shenli to the author of three of the basic knowledge about crowdfunding:"First, the crowdfunding amount has not reached the goal, money can be retired." Second, before the crowdfunding deadline, you can refund money at any time. Third, crowdfunding platform only in the project fund-raising stage to provide services, crowdfunding success to product completion of this stage, the platform is not to do DD (due diligence). "

In fact, these basic crowdfunding common sense is very clearly written in the prominent place of the site, but usually even the investment intention of the people themselves may also rarely notice, fully reflects the concept of "crowdfunding" in the domestic like the status of a newborn baby.

PostScript

The game is not a long time to come to China, but even so, the public pay attention to this new thing is not very small.

In the game category crowdfunding inside, the most popular is the electric competition prize class. On the one hand, "DOTA2" in the world is not the most popular moba game, but since 2014 TI4 adopted a full crowdfunding model to the fans to collect the tournament bonuses, one hit more than $10 million, the champions Newbee team won more than 5 million dollars, is almost twice times the total amount of TI3 bonuses. And such a model was soon introduced into the country, the number I league through crowdfunding won the amount of bonuses in the domestic game class crowdfunding project a new high.

Crowdfunding broke the competition of the tournament bonuses by the organizer solely responsible for the event practice, the effective mobilization of large fan group participation and consumption capacity, not only to expand the impact of the competition, but also for the crowdfunding platform itself to provide traffic support, can be said to be more than one swoop. A quality project like this is obviously a game for both players and manufacturers.

In addition to the simple game-making project, including the network of the Web platform also began to try to broaden the scope of the ACG, so we saw the fans should help crowdfunding, photo crowdfunding, activities crowdfunding and so on. Huang Shenli that content is the platform to survive the development of the core, they will continue to trial and error in the process of insisting on the game crowdfunding this routine to go on.

From the overall point of view, to say that "game crowdfunding" has been made in the domestic boom is certainly not in line with the reality, whether it is the concept itself or participatory mode, risk awareness, are far from the mature market form still has a small distance. coupled with the innate "sense of innovation" of the Chinese people, there have been many teams, many manufacturers have developed a new model that is totally different from the overseas general-purpose crowdfunding projects, such as the crowdfunding of all kinds of finished products, and even the participation of distributors, which makes the whole project lose its original meaning.

There are also some project sponsors purely as a propaganda platform, the crowdfunding as a more exposure to another means. Although the crowdfunding platform itself has the role of communication parties, but from the outset with too much subjective will to enter, and rely on the quality of the product itself to obtain attention objectively, I think there is a subtle difference.

Like many Western economic theories set to domestic failure, perhaps a lot of people now seem to have some "stale" game crowdfunding, after years will be proved to be more suitable for China's national conditions, will develop better, perhaps the goal is more pure, closer to the overseas model of the game crowdfunding can eventually get the majority of gamers recognition, In the face of this fledgling emerging industry model, we really have too many unknowns and puzzles that will take time to answer.

Start to taste stale from infancy? On the current situation of domestic game crowdfunding (the next)