Are mini games ushering in a new wave of growth opportunities? These categories remain blue ocean!

In 2022, when all segments of the game industry are moving towards 'stock competition', mini games are heading against the wind and ushering in a new round of golden period of growth.

According to the data disclosed by Tencent Advertising, the current monthly consumption of mini games has exceeded the 1 billion mark, and compared with last year, the number of mini game advertisers this year has doubled. It can be seen that at a time when the buying dividend of traditional APP has peaked and market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, entering the mini game track and doing a good job in the mini game business has become the choice of more and more manufacturers to achieve commercial growth.

However, after deciding to enter the mini-game track, some developers are still very confused: what kind of product should be made now? What should be done? These two major issues are the main obstacles for developers to take the next step. At the 2022 Game Advertising Ecology Conference held on August 10, Ren Hailong, head of Tencent Advertising Game Operations, gave a detailed interpretation of the current mini game ecology and development with the title of 'Small Games, Big Opportunities - New Curve for Game Growth'. Today, the teahouse will briefly sort out and analyze the relevant content, hoping to provide some help for everyone to answer their doubts.

01

The monthly consumption exceeds 1 billion

Mini games are ushering in a new round of golden growth period

Combined with the data released by the Game Advertising Ecology Conference, we can first conclude that our country's mini game market ecology is in a stage of vigorous development with many opportunities.

According to the data of the '2022 WeChat Mini Game Growth White Paper', in 2022, the number of WeChat mini game developers has exceeded 100,000, and the number of games with a monthly turnover of tens of millions has increased by 50% year-on-year. According to DataEye monitoring and statistics, the number of mini games participating in the purchase volume in the first half of 2022 increased by 4 times compared with the second half of 2021, of which the growth of the purchase scale of IAP mini games was particularly prominent, with a monthly purchase scale of more than 1 billion.

As more and more game manufacturers enter the mini game track and participate in the purchase volume of mini games, the data changes on the user side of mini games are also very surprising. According to statistics, the scale of high-paying users over the age of 30 in the mini game market has increased from 59% in 2018 to 69% in 2021.

So from the perspective of game manufacturers, what benefits can the rapidly developing mini game track bring to them?

First of all, in the context of the maturity of mini game development technology, the R&D cost and efficiency of mini games can be compressed to at least 50% of APP-side mobile games, so developers can recover their costs faster in the mini game track.

As early as the second half of 2020, the average CPM of IAP mini games in WeChat Moments has exceeded that of mobile game APPs, becoming the 'grab vanguard' of the game industry in WeChat traffic, and according to statistics, the CVR (conversion rate) of IAP mini games has reached about 2 to 3 times that of mobile game APPs.

Furthermore, according to Tencent advertising statistics, the overlap between mobile game APP users and mini game users is only 20%, so developers can broaden the coverage of game users and extend the game life cycle through dual-end operation.

02

Do what?

There are still many blue ocean opportunities in the mini game market that are worth digging into

So in this rapidly developing mini-game track, what kind of product is more likely to become the next hit? Ren Hailong said that the game categories in the mini game track can be roughly divided into two categories.

One is the classic category that has basically found the explosive methodology. After the exploration of many developers, a large number of classic categories such as cards, turn-based, Xianxia, legends, simulation management, and tower defense have emerged, and the success path of these categories on the mini game platform has also been basically clear: traditional medium and heavy mini games such as cards and turn-based mainly reflect high-value bursts and automatic battles, while emerging light categories such as simulation management and tower defense win with integrated development and casual gameplay, and in terms of monetization, most of them are designed for hybrid monetization.

Therefore, developers with certain products and technical reserves in the above categories can directly combine the popular methodologies summarized by other developers to micro-adapt the gameplay and monetization model to achieve profit growth at a lower cost.

The second is the potential category that developers are still exploring. Judging from the data, these sub-categories have a group of high-value potential user groups on the mini game platform, but the current number of products is not large, and the daily consumption of more than one million star-level explosives has not yet appeared, of which the most representative potential categories are female, shooting and two-dimensional.

It can be seen that compared with the horizontal comparison of APP-side mobile games that have entered the stock competition stage in most sub-categories, the mini game track is not so 'voluminous' for the time being, and there are still many blue ocean opportunities, especially those high-potential categories whose commercial potential has not yet been fully tapped, which is more likely to bring the next success to developers who dare to explore.

03

How to do it?

Tencent advertising escorts game companies on the road to mini-game exploration

After knowing what to do, what should developers do? In fact, in addition to the unique development advantages of the mini game track itself, in order to help more game manufacturers lay out and promote the healthy development of the mini game ecosystem, the mini game platform has also launched many product tools and support policies.

For example, Tencent Advertising has launched a '3+1' delivery matrix in response to the needs of developers, starting from the dimensions of product tools, system capabilities, traffic links and policy support, empowering game manufacturers in all aspects and escorting developers to smoothly enter the mini game track.

It is understood that in the past period of time, Tencent Advertising has achieved full coverage of WeChat, Tencent platform and content advertising, and high-quality traffic in response to the needs of developers at the mini game delivery level, and launched a new delivery system covering the OG matrix, which can help developers tap high-value users in an all-round way. In addition, in order to help high-quality products further gain natural growth, WeChat Game Center has also prepared some practical basic tools for developers, such as advertising monetization components, social sharing tools, mini game center lists, etc.

With the blessing of the above '3' capabilities and tools, the current developer's delivery ability on the mini game side has basically been aligned with the APP side, that is to say, using the above tools, developers can already achieve the transformation of the delivery effect of a mini game from '0' to '1'.

According to Ren Hailong, in the future, Tencent Advertising will continue to upgrade and help developers create more high-quality explosive products with richer policy support and more complete product services.

In the first step of the upgrade, Tencent Advertising has brought the most direct encouragement to developers - to increase its advertising fund policy again: for in-app purchase games, Tencent Advertising has reduced the ratio of in-app purchase products to 6:4. On this basis, the rational use of platform capabilities and services can also enjoy more advertising incentives, which greatly reduces the pressure on developers to launch on a large scale and boosts the continuous expansion of the user scale of high-quality games; For advertising monetization products, Tencent Advertising expands the coverage of the main traffic incentive policy, on the one hand, the incentive policy benefits more categories, and on the other hand, it extends the monetization incentive cycle for new users of Tencent's advertising channels, so that more reasonably monetized high-quality games and long-term operation products can enjoy the support of Tencent's advertising incentive policy.

For potential products, Tencent Advertising and WeChat Game Center have also jointly launched the 'Seed Plan', and developers who successfully sign up for the 'Seed Plan' will directly receive professional operation service guidance, and Tencent Advertising and WeChat Game Center will also accompany developers through the whole process of game research and operation such as game project approval, research and development, tuning, and delivery, bringing full-cycle and all-round support and services to the product.

At the same time, the 'New Game Soaring Plan', which was previously usually applied to APP mobile games, has also entered the mini game track. For high-quality new games with stable test results, the 'New Game Soaring Plan' will provide them with customized delivery plans and large-scale launch strategies to help developers quickly reach target users. It is worth noting that compared with APP-side mobile games, the 'New Game Soaring Solution' has a broader definition of new games and lower budget requirements in the mini game track, which is a great tool for the rapid start of high-quality IAP mini games.

In addition, Tencent Advertising has also launched the 'Blue Ocean Sprint Plan', which plans to continue to incubate more mini game products with developers than one million.

END

It is foreseeable that with the efforts of game manufacturers and the empowerment of various policies and tools of the platform, the mini game market will maintain rapid development in the coming period.

Therefore, Game Teahouse believes that now is the best time for manufacturers to tap into the commercialization potential of various mini games. As long as developers choose the appropriate subdivision track to invest in according to the team's advantages, and with the support of the multi-faceted capabilities provided by the platform, they will be able to take the lead in winning market opportunities and winning the dividends of the development of the mini game ecosystem.

Finally, developers interested in the mini game track and Tencent's new advertising support policy can scan the QR code below to obtain the '2022 WeChat Mini Game Growth White Paper' for more details.

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