2014, mobile phone changes in the past year

If you look at the entire 2014, perhaps we can also capture the following 10 details of the changes: the first is the game developers start to fully rely on IP, the second is the authorization of the top IP use began to appear all kinds of chaos ...

At the end of 2013 we analyzed the mobile gaming industry at that time eight of the established trends, including: first, the prevalence and success of IP games, these games whether formal access to licensing or simply playing Edge rub IP anyway all have tried; second, pay creative games sweeping the global trend no longer, At that time according to our tracking tiny wings may be paid creative games (basically not to IAP) swept the world's last curtain call; third, the promotion means has been from the crowded store rankings to the peripheral marketing, the retrospective may be a lot of comments summed up by the end of the style of play; Listed companies in the mobile phone game mergers and acquisitions boom, that stage listed companies as long as the casual release of a game correlation vane can trigger the stock price of the explosion; Its five, mobile gaming has been the introduction of the normal, such as Gameloft, Glu Games, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Chair Entertainment is one of the best; six, the restoration of the store in the App Store, Getjar seal Kill Opera Mini (since the opera Mobile store), the App Store blocked Appshopper and Appgratis era has passed, but Kakao, micro-letter, mobile phone QQ and Mo become the most appealing new channels; its seven, Grossing list of relatively solidified, micro-credit games and QQ game of the strong bully list and some of the game to take strong peripheral marketing, the turnover is worse; its eight, the high price game in the f2p trend appears relatively weak, the only exception estimated only mojang Minecraft (6.99 U.S. dollars).

Then, in the middle of 2014, we systematically reviewed the games that had been lost in the App Store in 2010-2014, detailing the huge changes that had taken place in the mobile gaming circles at different stages, such as: First, the Lite version and free version of the retreat, Those who have used the game as a pay-for-conversion method has been completely ineffective, more games directly on the F2P line of the road; second, the paid list and the grossing list almost lose relevance, the whole game world is basically f2p game, More creative pay games are no longer attractive to the largest category of developers; third, the grossing list casual, or increasingly midcore, the only exception may be King's Candy legend; four, no IAP free games are almost gone, Without IAP paid game is also not much, the purchase has become the most reliable developer revenue way.

If you look at the entire 2014, perhaps we can also capture the following 10 details of the changes:

First, there are three very interesting phenomena in the game IP field:

The first is that game developers start to rely entirely on IP, these IP regardless is the other domain well-known brand extends over, or before the mobile domain game transplant comes over, has certain IP is considered is the game marketing link the first most powerful bargaining chip, under this brutal competition pressure, Without a top-level IP on the psychological level, it seems that the lack of a most basic booster;

The second is the use of the top IP licensing began to appear all kinds of chaos, in addition to the possible existence of the expensive authorization and the final dividend share, IP holders in the IP use level of regulation is not in place, and even have a lot of poor game production cases to the original image has brought a negative impact ( Note: For example, game production is rotten or the theme of the game and the original IP image of the inherent images of the contrary, of course, those edge of the game to steal IP Shanzhai games may be shoddy in the original image to bring a very negative impact;

The third is a considerable proportion of ordinary even very general image was deliberately packaged into IP resource impostors, because of the limited number of IP resources, in the face of strong demand in the game market under a number of slightly more users of resources may be in the negotiations between the two sides of the package promoted to the so-called IP and hype, In fact, these image value itself does not have the brand, the instant be enthusiasm become the direct beneficiary of this wave of IP.

Second, the game distribution pattern is from the schools into the oligarchy, from the earliest small developers or independent game developers to take refuge in large-scale mobile companies to do the distribution of large-scale gaming companies are also starting to seek more resources to the volume of channels (such as micro-mail or mobile phone QQ) to do the distribution, And the biggest change is that once very dynamic, several midsize-scale research and distribution companies are abandoning their channels to Tencent (or perhaps other powerful gaming-listed large companies), the evolution of the process is: Smart phone games began in creative schools of contention, ZTE in the large-scale distribution of the supremacy, The final army will be stranded in a handful of oligarchs ' export resources (either to get the resources to be released or to face a list of not-so-crowded).

Of course, from a single developer's point of view, access to Tencent channels may mean a good chunk of revenue (Tencent's games rarely fail easily, and most can hold a lucrative position on the list), but from the point of view of the App Store's revenue list, in addition to Tencent and several big game companies, The small and medium-sized developers who can squeeze into the top 50 are already running low, which means that the revenue list is solidifying and that, as more and more good games are being channelled into these channels, the reliability is only getting stronger.

Third, part of the IAP as the core revenue means of the real free game is to pay the skin of the game to squeeze the best position of the paid list, resulting in more of the original and stand-alone attributes of the pay list of the ecological changes (or worse).

The reason is only a few: the first is that the pay list is less competitive than the free list, and it's easier to get a good list position and exposure at a small cost (with a shorter, easier way to reach users than direct PK's free list); the second is a relatively limited download of the pay list, Limited download can not meet the IAP as a revenue means of the real F2P game's user base demand will necessarily mean that the need to move closer to the free, and the public's limited access to paid games has an intuitive impression of "picking up cheap" (Note: This can refer to the previous restrictions, Of course, there is no one to mention these restrictions now, the third is to obtain marketing, branding and media at all levels of measurement resources.

In the beginning only a few games with this relative curve of the way, and now hanging pay-skin free game has been completely, and even sometimes the list of the few are the type of game.

Four, beauty star marketing began to become a regular way, and even some of the title and icon of the game directly hit the spokesperson's name and Avatar.

The behavior of star endorsement games is always very common in the game circle, but in the so-called lower cost of the hands of the field is almost a short period of time to emerge from these signing stars of the big (more recently in the press release should be Fan Bingbing, Liu Yan and Lin Chi-ling endorsement), of course, now see the basic still are large-scale companies ( such as the corresponding financial resources) in the operation of similar things.

Its five, and last year's swarmed merger somewhat opposite, this year has announced the release of listed companies to terminate the acquisition of news began more and more, such as the public notice of the Key Bridge communications on the fine Maitong, the German force shares to the Valkyries century, roaming holding on magic Feature, Phoenix Media has played a part in Shanghai's termination of acquisitions and the termination of some vague objects, such as the end of Zhejiang Fu Run's acquisition of game assets, the termination of the acquisition of new friends of the game assets, and the end of the acquisition of energy transfer game assets.

The reasons behind may be complex, but some are still dominant, such as: the previous mergers and acquisitions behavior in the majority of the performance requirements of the game company failed to meet the expectations of the overall vitality of the industry's judgment, the operation of the underlying companies and the ability to meet the question of the overall valuation was reduced; Mobile game in the hurricane three or four years after the pattern began to change, has been divided into Tencent and the Department of non-Tencent (we are in the analysis of the market, generally Tencent side, not Tencent side, or the first deduction of the part of Tencent to consider the rest of the market capacity), Coupled with the fact that quality assets were first snapped up, the attractiveness of the rest of the individual objects declined markedly.

On the whole, listed companies released a game recruitment news also limit the story has been finished, even if the acquisition or investment of a competitive hand tour company is not necessarily able to catalytic the price of the storm, already several listed companies involved in the concept of the game after the stock price continued to decline (of course, the target companies are sometimes implicated, Once the takeover fails, it is likely to have a very negative impact on the underlying company, which has already fallen because of the takeover and looks like more cases.

With its six, the game's effect making is replacing the original details of the game. In the current game, most of the Midcore game is even part of the casual game is the core of the experience is combat PK, the most early to be sick inquiry The most is to ignore the process directly numerical results (take out a numerical comparison, from the numerical end of the result, up to some other policy trade-offs), And now it should be with a lot of exaggerated animation effects cover up everything including the game should exist some of the battle details, especially now popular some ARPG games, the sense of attack has been eliminated under the disguise of special effects.

We are often able to see that some of the skills that have been released are almost as gorgeous as the screen, all the people involved in the fight are instantly involved in the aura of the skill and continue for a few seconds until the skill disappears and the player is able to face up to the objects again, and how the brutal fighting that has taken place seems to be no longer the focus, There was no sense of shock that was quickly overlooked.

Should be able to foresee current and future games, skills and extraordinary special effects animations that will dominate everything, and the sense of shock that has been talked about may be diminishing.

Its seven, the anti-brand operation is still in China's big way. We are often able to see many mobile games in various stores using the four corners of the icon (such as Zynga and Wooga in the upper-left corner, line and Disney in the upper-right corner, Kabam and G5 in the lower-left corner, Glu and Gameloft in the lower-right corner) Label their own company's simplified logo to increase the audience recognition and acceptance of their products, and through the continuous credibility of the specific game accumulated for the company's overall brand image plus points, and finally make themselves a very high distribution of credibility of the company, and to drive the concept of user formation as long as the identification of the corresponding small symbol basic can confirm that the game is worth downloading experience.

This is the most common trend in the international environment, and many of China's large scale companies are moving in the opposite direction: dismantling (or abandoning) the company's brand as a personal account.

Integration of the brand and personalized operations are considered, the former with the app quality drive these account company's brand, and then to the company's reputation to enhance the value of specific game evaluation, while the latter can circumvent many of the App store policy barriers, such as the App Store's sit policy ( There are already companies that have been given the whole bottom of the entire application because of a partial application violation, and there have been previous games with different names and different personal accounts repeatedly issued multiple times, and for a long time without any punitive behavior Of course, also include a personalized account of the game released once the stain is not easy to visually affect the company's image (at least the basic user is difficult to dig to this level).

Its eight, domestic game on the App Store home page recommended a slightly lower percentage, most of the strong revenue capacity of the game is not on the home page (including the iphone and the ipad market) has been recommended (but in the fine categories have). Judging from the past recommended taste in China, it is more likely that the world's synchronized popular games are highly recommended in China, and that developers with high brand reputations are also more likely to be recommended for new games, and that games with other high quality awards are also highly likely to be recommended; The production of sophisticated and creative game developers are also highly likely to be recommended; Because of the user-oriented, mild game proportion of the game is recommended high probability; Old games can be updated (home recommended location has a separate column), good video preview (home page recommended location has separate) and become an entry-level game ( Home recommended location has a separate column to continue to obtain referral opportunities.

In contrast, equally lucrative games, such as Supercell's clash of clans, including the iphone and the ipad market, are estimated to be hundreds of times, and King's Candy Crush saga a slightly less estimated 20 times. According to SuperData estimates, the former 2014 annual revenue of 2 billion U.S. dollars, the latter 1 billion dollar level.

In nine, Apple's $1 and 3-dollar option for China does not seem to change the real picture of paid downloads in China. Of course, the 1 Yuan option for the player is definitely more than 6 yuan option to download the impact, but here we want to say only for developers, because the pay download list only the limit of the load, 1 yuan option for developers basically only have symbolic meaning.

Suppose the 1-dollar option does increase the amount of paid downloads (from 1500 to 5,000 times a day), but for the first 10 days of a market that can almost decide the overall 25% to 50% earnings (some of the net-paid games will basically be half the total earnings in the first week, except for special cases), For the necessary effective revenue, select the 1-dollar option game is estimated to be transferred to IAP (and more dependent on the IAP, because the proceeds from direct paid downloads are very small, for example, the original is 1500*12 single-day revenue, it will fall to 5000*1 income, In addition, domestic paid creative games also rarely in other major markets have a good performance, but also led to the Chinese region is vital to the revenue battlefield, so it is better to do directly f2p can enlarge the base of the download user, without the small pay download revenue + small user base +iap in circles.

Its ten, inappropriate marketing methods are spreading, the most typical example is not too much of an exaggerated amount of water for the game's propaganda point, similar to the way we have held many different types of, such as: The original game does not exist the function point, put aside the game itself to talk about team experience and dreams, The analogy or belong to some popular or once very classic game ranks, to Pretexting has been successful in the tone of marketing products, with special advertising and gimmicks as a marketing tool, with paid game gifts as a lure of the way.

And the recent basic is becoming a marketing standard of a way more frightening: even if only a small number of levels of download is also ready to pack their own national-level game.