Looking back on the whole year, the whole game industry seems to be blowing a wave of "Renaissance". The sensational works are no longer developed with high-end engines, how powerful the pictures are, or ask a few stars to endorse them. it's just a simple word "difficult".

Recall how many afternoons it took to get through a gatekeeper "Contra", just started not how to avoid the Green Duck's "Mario", "difficult" has become the first batch of players to contact the game's general feeling.

And this year, it is this retro trend:

In the host world, following last year's "Soul of Darkness", this year's TGA's best game "Wolf" is also abusing all kinds of players. A big "vegetable" word attracts countless players and constantly tries to challenge. (it is difficult for players to joke about the game.)

In the PC world, the "World of Warcraft" nostalgic suit was even more unexpected, detonating the entire server as soon as it was launched, and the operator NetEase, Inc had to connect to a new array of servers to quell the anger of players waiting in line to log in.

The mobile game industry also began to pay attention to the operation, play, and even the construction of the world outlook of the whole work. With its unique play design, "Ark of tomorrow" successfully integrated the relatively minority tower defense games with the current popular two-dimensional games, and became popular all over the network.

The above several games, not because of the simple "difficult" is sought after by the players, the difficulty is only its appearance, the deep gameplay is its real core.

"World of Warcraft" nostalgic clothes can be called "classic version" because of its underlying design, its gameplay, playability is high, whether you are equipped with the party, plot party, social party, leisure party, all kinds of players can find happiness here, have a sense of belonging.

The design philosophy of this game is that it will not be out of date in any era.

If we say that the explosive growth of mobile games in the past few years has lowered the threshold for entry into the game, it is the education and training of users in the game market. Now, with the improvement of users' cognitive level, although there is still a market for ordinary skin-changing games, the low-level play of either liver or krypton has made players feel boring.

Users have gone from the original "cool" to the need for more spiritual kernels, such as the common sense of plot substitution, the sense of social belonging between players, and the bond between players and works.

If the content conveyed by a work can resonate with the players, it will be favored by the players and pursued by the market.

With the fading of the demographic dividend and the tightening of the approval of version numbers, the market will return to the quality of the works. High-quality works will not only be cool, but also bring more cores for players.

And how to interpret this trend, we need to sort out the industry as a whole this year.

First, the market growth continues, the internal production capacity of the industry returns to the quality game, the external newcomers are forced to improve the quality, and the international going to sea requires the quality.

The overall game market has continued to grow in 19 years, with the number of players 2019H1 reaching 554 million, an increase of 4.53% over the same period last year. Compared with the 5% year-on-year growth rate in 14-17 years, this year is expected to continue a relatively high growth rate of about 7% in 18 years.

2019H1's sales revenue reached 116.31 billion yuan, an increase of 10.77% over the same period last year, and the annual sales revenue is expected to be more than 10%.

After the rapid development of the mobile game market, the growth rate began to slow sharply, with 2019H1 sales revenue of 75.31 billion yuan, an increase of 18.77% over the same period last year.

The overseas revenue of 2019H1 self-developed games reached US $5.73 billion, an increase of 23.76% over the same period last year.

The main sea destinations are East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Because they belong to emerging markets, Chinese enterprises have a large number of local top 100 daily income.

While mature markets such as the United States, Japan and Europe, where players have a good foundation and high willingness to pay, contribute a higher share of income, but Chinese enterprises enter the local market with a smaller number of the top 100 per day, indicating that the money of high net worth players in mature markets is not so easy to earn.

Comparing the differences between emerging and mature market products, it can be found that it is difficult to win the favor of mature players in Europe and the United States only by changing skin and changing values, and the level of players in emerging markets is also constantly improving. with characteristics of play, higher-quality works are the magic weapon to go out to sea in the future.

1. The production capacity of the industry is gone, new players enter, and practitioners need to refine the quality of their works.

In 2018, the approval of domestic game version numbers was suspended for eight consecutive months and did not resume until December. the backlog of many game works was regarded as a stick to the industry; only in May in 2019, no new games were released, but except for more than 100 approval in the first three months and September, the number of monthly approvals was basically maintained at less than 100 for the rest of the year, and the major manufacturers had to take the boutique route or be forced to go to sea.

The examination and approval policy limits the outflow of shoddy works from the source, the industry ushered in a wave of capacity loss, and the overall quality of listed games increased.

Affected by the "supply-side" reform, the leading edge of the industry has been further consolidated. In the 2019Q2 mobile game market, Tencent took the first place with a market share of 56.5%, NetEase, Inc's market share reached 21%, and Panax notoginseng mutual entertainment reached 7%.

The status of the leading brother seems to be the same, but the market has ushered in new players.

Short video giants Kuaishou Technology and Douyin have entered the game market one after another. With the name of "flow harvester", Douyin has become the largest release platform for casual games.

Therefore, the inflow of fresh blood constantly reminds practitioners that they need to constantly refine their work quality, product development and innovation ability.

If you look at it this way, will the market only accept the participation of big players? If you think so, then you are wrong.

2, deep ploughing subdivision, e-sports break through, have high-quality works, will reap users

Game works compete with creativity, and extremely compete with the "artistic attainments" of the producers behind them. It is precisely because of this that independent games such as Chen Xinghan's "Wind Traveller", this year's "Paradise Disco" and "Baba is you" have always been handed down by word of mouth among the players.

In this year's game rankings, especially when it comes to going out to sea, Lilith has done well. Through years of accumulation in strategic games, the new film "the Awakening of the World" has won many fans overseas as soon as it is released, and its income has never dropped out of the top five. and ranked first in China's overseas mobile games in October.

Works such as Jijia FunPlus's "Musketeer era" have also been at the forefront of the revenue list for a long time, and FPX, the company's electric competition team, has won this year's S tournament championship.

Deep ploughing in the field of subdivision, as always, to create high-quality works, can also rise among the heroes and dominate.

3. E-sports 's popular trend is obvious, and the market scale is constantly expanding.

When it comes to FPX, we have to mention e-sports.

At present, the image of e-sports in the hearts of the Chinese people has changed. E-sports players can also win glory for their country in the world, just like athletes. The spirit conveyed by the competition such as teamwork and never giving up infects the audience in front of the screen.

The game is not just a game, it can bring us more spiritual core.

Second, two-dimensional players are typical of this trend.

Two-dimensional gamers, with their high stickiness, willingness to pay and high frequency of interaction, are obviously different from other kinds of gamers by virtue of the characteristics of "three high".

The recharge here is not for mere strength, but for "love", the most basic emotion of human beings and the advanced needs of Maslow's level of needs.

These two-dimensional users who are keen on online interaction like to re-create the game content, which not only directly increases the popularity of the game, but also prolongs the life cycle of the work.

In addition to the game, what is pursued here is the emotion between the player and the game character, and the attribution between the player and the player.

Moreover, do not underestimate the "recharge for love" of these "abandoned houses". "broken 3" almost sent Miha to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. "FGO" can be said to have directly sent Bilibili Inc. to NASDAQ.

As these two-dimensional players gradually enter the mainstream society, the new generation of players continue to join, the game market needs higher quality works, bring players more cores, in order to meet the market demand.

Third, the social value of the game is constantly deepening.

In addition to its own leisure intelligence, the game has another depth in its function and value through the continuous exploration of practitioners for many years.

It is already very common to use games to help you learn. This year's "2019 Game Creative production Competition" includes excellent works such as the physical world, Dream Butterfly and Axe Yue, which explain physical knowledge, the origin of Chinese characters and national culture in the way of games.

What is even more unexpected is that during the National Day holiday, another placement game, "Home and National Dream", was launched, which directly reached the top of the AppStore free game list and was officially recommended by People's Daily.

Why can an ordinary placement game attract so much attention from players? Although the game is small, the quality is excellent.

The game integrates the construction, management, collection and other elements with the real development of the country. while players experience the game, they can use the perspective of the masters to build their hometown and feel that the appearance of their hometown is constantly changing in their own hands. feel the great changes of our country in the past 70 years.

It is precisely to accurately control the pulse of the times, this seemingly boring minority game, but shines brilliantly during the National Day.

The game can bring us more cores!

Conclusion

From the tightening of version number approval, to the market work "Renaissance", from a two-dimensional minority breakthrough, to richer social value. The game is being accepted by more and more people, and the core conveyed by the game is richer.

Therefore, high-quality content will become the inevitable trend of the development of the industry, perfect research and development capabilities, outstanding creative ability, is expected to become a leader in the industry.

The Renaissance revives the original intention of the game, the precipitation after the rapid development of the industry, and the common choice of employees, players and regulators as a whole. In the future, quality will become the top priority of the development of the industry. Behind the quality, the game brings us a richer core and a more colorful world.