According to the 2017 China Game Industry Report, the actual sales revenue of the web game market in 2017 was 15.6 billion yuan, down 16.6% year on year, of which the share of the total revenue decreased significantly, only 7.6%. In addition, the number of basic users was 257 million, down 6.6% year on year. This is the fourth consecutive year that the number of page game users has declined.
According to the report on the pager industry released by IResearch In 2016, the growth rate of the domestic pager market reached its peak in 2013, then declined slightly year by year, and the growth almost stagnated in 2015. There are two main factors that cause the growth stagnation. One is the speculative influx of some enterprises, and the quality of web games is not equal to the promotion speed of the number of users. Second, due to the disappearance of demographic dividend, the page game market has been difficult to find space for rise.
Under the attack of two kinds of factors, the depression of the page game market also seems reasonable. In this regard, some people believe that in the context of the downturn in the market, the development of web game operators began to focus on improving the quality of games, in order to retain and attract more users. However, from the current situation of the pager industry, the improvement of game quality has not attracted more users to join in, but the pager industry chaos still exists.
The industry is still in turmoil, returning to simplicity may be an illusion
Of course, different types of games have their own unique industry chains, and so do page games. The essence of the web game chain is to attract players to the game in the early stages, and then take money from them as the game runs. This assembly-line operation doomed the life cycle of web games to be short, but also easily seize the fate of the pager industry throat, no traffic pager will be difficult to survive.
Therefore, the page game with a short life cycle but eager for traffic has gradually entered a malignant growth stage, from losing money to running water, to false service, etc., these “unpopular” operations have caused the disorderly development of the page game market.
But it also begs the question, given that page-games are so “bad”, how do they attract gamers to them?
This has to mention one of the chaos of the page game industry, but also one of the links of the page game industry chain, that is, to set up a variety of attractive ways to attract players to charge money, in order to achieve the profit target of all kinds of tricks. One of the most common tactics is the lure of exploding equipment to make money, so that players keep pumping money into the game for the purpose of exploding equipment.
In fact, the player may have been “hooked” at the beginning of the game, and the end result will be full of hope, and then leave angrily.
And in order to achieve the game players feel profitable to continue to add money to the purpose, many web games will generally set the rules of the game, such as set simple game process, so that players can easily get started the game; Then there is the fact that the player can blast out a lot of equipment with easy kills, and the higher the level, the more equipment you can get.
In order to level up, players have to spend more money, and over time they are trapped in a vicious circle. And the reason why this kind of game routine to attract players is called the industry chaos, because the game to attract players to charge money is too naked, the money behind the lure is the game in the game carefully set by the game developers. As a result, a seemingly unskilled web game is not appealing to players, and many of them are playing it not for entertainment but for profit.
Surprisingly, this type of game, which is easy to play and full of routines, still attracts many RMB players to go crazy. This brings us to another industry mess with web games, which is wall-to-wall pager advertising.
Open the web page, overwhelming is “Dragon bao Dao, click to send…” This type of page tour advertising, I believe that many people are not unfamiliar. Other page games that are keen on similar types of advertising include Blue Moon developed by Zhejiang Shenghe, Chuanqi Baye published by 37 games, and Thunder Fury launched by 9377. Such ads, which are often endorsed by popular celebrities, have seen a boom since 2015, but the quality of the ads does not seem to be in proportion to the influence of celebrities.
Indeed, in order to attract users, star endorsements have gradually become the standard of head page games. However, this kind of page-game advertising often seems to be a little shoddily made, cheap clothing and props, special effects of 50 cents, coupled with shocking and strong leading lines, virtually make page-game also become a different RMB players, after all, the cost of inviting star endorsement is relatively high.
As a result, it seems that the quality of web games has not really improved in spite of the existence of game routines and “eye-popping” advertisements, and that the sincerity of game developers to return to the basics and focus on user experience seems to be lacking.
However, an analysis of celebrity endorsements and the oddity of the page-game market may offer some insights into the industry.
Behind the decreasing user scale year by year: star endorsement is effective, but the influence is weakening
From the perspective of star endorsement, it can be concluded that there may be a contradiction in the page game market.
As mentioned earlier, web games are heavily dependent on traffic, and in order to increase traffic, it makes sense to seek celebrity endorsements. It makes sense that stars who are endorsements for web games or have a tough on-screen persona tend to increase trust among players; Or own traffic, can attract many fans to join the game.
But by the former, the web game user scale has been a declining trend in recent years, this had to be thoughtful, since the invite celebrities is to increase the user traffic, then the decrease of the user scale and revealed another fact, with the disappearance of demographic dividend, the role of celebrity endorsements seems a little less, to attract users also not so big. Therefore, it can be argued that celebrity endorsement and the decline in the number of users are mutually contradictory in a sense, and the effect of celebrity endorsement may be the same as demographic dividend, which has reached the ceiling of growth.
Some conclusions can be drawn from the above observations.
First of all, it’s clear that no matter how much people criticize “hot eyes” ads, they still pop up like a plaster, and players are still willing to buy them. This proves that these types of ads still work for some users, otherwise game developers wouldn’t be spending so much money. In this regard, it can be considered that the disorderly development of the page game market is not only related to the common gameplay and routine of the game, but also related to the celebrity endorsement.
But if you really think about it, it’s not a bad thing to have a celebrity endorsing a game. The root of the problem is the quality of the game, as well as the lack of careful advertising and phrasings, which have contributed to the bad reputation of the pG-game industry.
Secondly, since the number of users of web games is decreasing year by year, it also exposes the shortcomings of the web game industry, which may lose celebrity endorsements, the life cycle of many web games will be shorter, and the pace of death will accelerate. Therefore, how long the flame behind the celebrity endorsement page game will continue to burn, in addition to the opinions of different people, more depends on what kind of appeal the game can bring to the players, either money or quality, which can relatively prolong the life cycle.
Finally, from the point of view of game quality, perhaps the way of page game to obtain user traffic can not be limited to star endorsement, but also from e-sports and other popular gameplay, expand the way of game promotion. For one thing, although each game has a specific way of playing and playing, if you push too hard and just want to extract benefits from the user, over time, you will only get further and further away from the user. Second, profits are important, but playing with players is also a magic weapon to win in the long run. If you join e-sports, maybe page games can gain a more stable market position and achieve the promotion goal.
On the whole, it can be predicted that the role of celebrity endorsement in the pager market is still not small, but from the pager market which is decreasing year by year, the charm of celebrity endorsement seems to be weakening. This is understandable, as the quality of the game has not been improved for a long time, the user’s patience is gradually exhausted.
H5 pages into the new favorite, the industry will enter the future of ordered development
In general, pager has become a volume reduction market since 2015, more than two years after the last golden growth period. However, there is no denying that web games, like mobile games and terminal games, are also dominated by head players in the game market. The difference is that new entrants to web games may have a lot of room for development, which can be seen from the characteristics of the web game itself.
As a subdivision of online games, web games have unique competitive advantages, no download, no installation, that point that play. There’s also a more compelling move, which is flexible timing, simple business model, not only doesn’t take up too much of the player’s time, but it’s easy to get things done. In contrast, mobile and console games seem to struggle to do this.
If pager developers can take advantage of these advantages and create games that are mutually beneficial to their users, the life cycle of pager products will be relatively longer. With the support of these advantages, how to create a popular game products have become the most important research and transport business. At the same time, inject fresh blood for web game, is also a development direction.
For example, among the web games that won the Golden Link Award last year, there were two groups of H5 page game products, which accounted for a large proportion of the winning page game products. Among the awards that these H5 games won was the “Gamers Favorite Web game” award. H5 games are so popular that they may become a new direction for web games. Therefore, if these pager companies can develop in the DIRECTION of H5 and create good web games, it may be an opportunity for pager to regain its life.
But anyway, no matter what industry, boutique is always a few, in order to become the head of the page tour market players, I believe that many research and transport business also under a lot of time. So, beginners have a chance, but the older is still the wiser.
It can be expected that in the future, web games and all network games will be the same, into the development of order. At that point, the temptation to spend money will be replaced by an open and healthy atmosphere. And as for what kind of web game is really popular, the author thinks the most important, is in the game product development process, had better avoid the network game that the skeleton key like secret: don’t ask the strategy, hit but charge money.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110