Why do mobile games fall into the infinite cycle of "Cool and die"?

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Note: Compared with traditional host games and PC games, the life cycle of mobile games is often short. The "Candy Smash Saga", which has sucked gold for the past 1 years, has inevitably plunged into recession and stagnant growth, leading to a plunge in game developer King's share price. Why is that? The English-language technology media recently published a column from the famous game industry analyst Tegg Kelly Tadhg Kelly, analyzing the topic. In this article, Kelly traced the root of the problem to the lack of brand awareness, the lack of cultural connotations of mobile games, the media's interest in reporting mobile games, and the inability of mobile gamers to form communities. In addition, he suggests that mobile platforms learn steam practices that promote interaction between players and players and developers.

In the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Mothy Python and the Holy Grail), starring Palin (Michael Palin) has this classic line:

"Everyone said I was stupid to build castles in the swamp, but I insisted on doing that and I wanted to prove it to them." The first castle sank into the swamp, so I built the second one, and the second sank into the swamp, and I built a third. It also collapses. But the fourth castle is alive and still standing!

Game development is like this. You may have been spending a lot of time developing a game, maybe after 51 failures, suddenly opened up, in a word, you have a lot of effort for game development, but it is often like building on the quicksand. The success of a game is related not only to the design of the game itself, but also to many other factors, such as platform timing, technical constraints, and cultural suitability--and they are not within your control.

For game companies that have scored, the next question will be how to continue and expand, which is also difficult. Traditional game companies often build brands to deal with the problem, so a "Final Fantasy" spawned countless games of the same theme, a "Halo" every few years will bring a new novel ... That's how many of the billions of-market giants are formed.

This applies to today's gaming industry. But unlike in the past, today's more modern platforms make it extremely difficult for gaming companies to build brands. In the era of mobile gaming, the super masterpiece seems to be "successors", which I think is a big problem.

The basic principle of brand building

We often say that the game is a work-driven business, but in fact, the real driver of the game business is the brand. To make sure that the signboard game continues to glow, large distributors such as EA or video are willing to spend a lot of time and effort because they know that brands can bring value. More than 10 million sets of games per se are rarely seen, and after several iterations, maturing brands and intellectual property Rights (IP) can make these game companies continue to succeed.

The prosperity of PC networking games has brought about the change of rules, but the basic logic of shaping the brand remains unchanged. "EVE Online", "World of Warcraft" and "League of Heroes" frequently updated, popularity has been extended. Admittedly, most MMO or MOBA games fail-like castles in swamps, but once they are alive they have the ability to create large sums of money for their own owners for years in a row.

Most classic games maintain the long-term value of their IP through the continuity of brands and roles (in different versions). "FIFA football" or "biochemical crisis" is like a series of superhero comics, or a movie made by a star camp, and the influence is far beyond a game. They are the big names in their respective types, they are required to play the game, and players compare the different versions of each series of games. Over time, the relationship between players and these brands will stretch for years to bring stability to game makers.

Whether your company is small like Erepubik (note: an Irish gaming studio) or has reached the height of riot games, the long-term future of the game company is always the brand. You have to be able to create 10 games around an IP and focus on how well the player accepts them. But to do this, game makers need to build strong links with users, otherwise their game is likely to become a successor to the weak generation of products ... Unfortunately, this is precisely the reality of the mobile gaming industry.

Tough second act

It is now less than 1 years since King overtook Zynga to become the top gaming maker for Facebook. King has been making casual-style web games for years, with a relatively small audience (about 30 million), but the three-game Candy Smash Saga helps the company create miracles. The legend of Candy Smash changed King's fortunes, and gave birth to a large number of other "legends" of the company wearing its aura. On the eve of the listing, King's IPO was priced at $22.50 trillion, seemingly unstoppable.

But King was unfortunate enough to follow Zynga's footsteps. In the latest quarter, King failed to meet his revenue expectations, and the outside world began to question whether the company could continue to grow. A general worry is that King's flagship, Candy Smash Saga, has reached its peak and stalled, but there is no other game that can take its course. As a result, King's share price fell all the way.

Does the trajectory have déjà vu? Zynga has been using the Facebook game to cross the boom, and then the approach has suddenly worked, and Zynga has not yet revitalized its mobile platform. Supercell the COC boom to sell shares, but after the COC and the cartoon farm, the company seemed unable to launch a game that was as high as the fallacy. GungHo rely on "Wisdom Dragon fan City" earn pots overflowing, but the prospect is not clear; Rovio, too, when the aura of the Angry Bird faded, the Finnish company did not wing its wings.

In the mobile gaming circle, there are too many companies like them. They have the ability to rely on a single super masterpiece to suck gold in 12-18 months, but they can't do it on the basis of the already laid foundation, like a traditional game distributor. The "Candy Smash saga" may have hundreds of millions of players, but it's not as loud as many Sony games-and it's not just about the game picture. In the long run, these mobile games are doomed to be difficult to breed.

Difficult to fill the gap

For a long time, game media have been (and will remain) an important medium for understanding how the video gaming industry works. The media will write forward and evaluate the game, so in a way, the media can directly affect the reputation of a game. The game media used to be a magazine carrier, but now it's mainly in the form of blogs, player websites and YouTube podcasts. Game media to disseminate game-related information, enlarge the character, thus deriving cultural and tribal sense. This is not much different from Hollywood or Silicon Valley's star-building movement: The game media "created" the Pitt Morinholens, just like the tech media created Ellon Masc.

But game media generally lack love for mobile platforms. I have said a long time ago that although some mobile games have been successful, the game media are still not interested in them because of the cultural divide-and so are the readers of the media. The problem is that any game branding process relies on players ' recognition of their culture, but in mobile games, this identity is almost non-existent. On the contrary, the attitude of the game media to the mobile game resembles the attitude of the film media to the TV soap opera.

"Yes, they do." But what?

Business geeks focus on sales performance and data, but journalists are concerned about what the game symbolizes. However, in addition to "Monument Valley" and "Long journey" and other sporadic works, the vast majority of mobile games in this regard seems to be deficient. To be blunt, they are pastimes used to pass the time, unable to inspire the reporting desires of game media journalists who are apparently unwilling to go back and forth to preach exaggerated income figures.

On the other hand, in the mobile gaming platform, no product can have a loyal hardcore fan group. It's about mobile gamers ' spending habits--the interest comes faster, the number of mobile games is too large, and the range of players is too wide, but even worse, mobile platforms such as APP store and GooglePlay don't give game makers any chance to interact with players at all.

This is what I want to say about the "community divide". When a player discovers a game and completes the download, the developer needs to talk to them, and the mobile platform does poorly.

Today's PC games are no longer dependent on retail. The steam platform stands out because it enables players to communicate with the game maker. In steam, each game comes with a "player discussion area" and a separate page--the developer can release the game version log, artwork, videos, announcements, etc. on the page. Players can also post content, such as a game guide or their own paintings. Players can reply to a developer's main post or discuss all the topics of the game on their own. So essentially, valve offers internet forums, Facebook pages, and Atlas mashups for each game, and integrates them into the steam platform's ecosystem. In this way, the player's participation in the game, the feeling of immersion will be promoted, and this also let steam ushered in an interesting game blowout.

I think steam's approach is worth learning on the mobile platform. At the moment, they are more like circa retail stores that incorporate the Xbox Live 2007 feature. The mobile platform only allows players and developers to have an Amazon-style "interaction": When a player buys a game, can write a comment, and then no longer has any association with the developer. Players are unable to establish direct conversations with game makers, which significantly weaken the long-term potential of a game to shape a brand. "Wow" players can easily find each other, forge alliances and culture, and speak freely about the game. COC can do this, but it's much more troublesome. This is the Achilles heel of mobile gaming.

In addition, there is a lack of cross promotion of mobile platform games. Facebook has a lot of problems, but it's a good platform for cross promotion. For example, on the Facebook platform, players have long been used to playing a variety of Zynga's games-they can log in to a game and then go to other Zynga games via the extension bar.

"Play one, die" syndrome.

My view is that, given the current lack of cultural influence in mobile gaming (with limited media attention), players are less able to form a brand in a mobile platform where there are real factors such as the lack of opportunities to talk to developers or each other (the community divide), and limited game crossover. "Playing with one's death" is likely to become the norm. Public attention is the only vehicle for the success of mobile games, but people are forgetful. Mobile game developers cannot turn potential users into hardcore fans, even if they are no bigger.

How to solve the problem? Building a player community is the key. Companies such as Apple and Amazon have tried to introduce services for different games, such as game Center, but these services do not provide players and developers with the communication they really need. The mobile platform may draw on the steam approach, nurturing the player community and supporting the player's conversations with each other and between the player and the game manufacturer.

So one day, mobile platforms will likely give players more free space, like today's PC platforms, and developers will have the ability to try more and provide more interesting stories for game media reporters-not to return to PCs. When a large number of players participate, mobile games have the opportunity to cure the "play a Dead" syndrome.