ChinaJoy’s 15 Years: A Living History Of Changes In Chinese Games

In the hot summer, 15 years of history have passed.

Since the first session was held in Beijing in 2002, it has attracted players, game manufacturers and technology providers from all over the world every year. This is another gamer event after the E3 exhibition in the United States and the Tokyo Game Show in Japan.

The first edition had only one exhibition hall and a total audience of no more than 60,000 people. At that time, the game industry was very marginalized, and playing games was considered "not doing your job properly." There are large-scale exhibitions that carry the hobbies of players, which brings everyone a sense of satisfaction and recognition.

Up to now, the entire exhibition hall of Shanghai New International Expo Center has been reserved every year, with the venue area exceeding 170,000 square meters. According to the data just released by CJ this year, the total number of admissions over the four days was as high as 342,000, of which 121,000 were admitted in a single day on July 29, which was twice the number of the first session.

Combing the entire history of changes in China's game industry, we can find that from 2004 to 2006, stand-alone games were popular; then, there was the era of online games represented by "Legend"; by 2007, when "Legend" came out, mobile games began to rise. In 2012, Xiaocheng , mobile games have become popular since last year.

He Tianyi, CEO of Yuewei E-commerce, was a service provider of Shanda at the time and participated almost every year. He vaguely remembered Chen Tianqiao's speech at the 2008 conference, witnessing Shanda's glory as the first domestic game listed company that year.

He described Shanda's status back then as being like Tencent Interactive Entertainment this year. One detail is that when all game manufacturers started sending out gift bags, Shanda was sending out push carts. We will book the swimming pool, please ask the most. "There were huge crowds of people, all kinds of decorative bags bigger than bags and boxes were used to hand out peripheral gifts, and the girls' skirts were getting shorter and shorter." This was the first sentence he recalled, "But many people in the game company at that time really loved In this industry, game practitioners in the online gaming era all started by playing red and white consoles, and games have accompanied them throughout their childhood.”

This year’s grand gaming booth

It is also a must-see hot spot in the exhibition every year. The most exaggerated thing is that around 2010, major exhibitors began to compete with each other to invite more people and whose skirts were shorter, until it became vulgar. Every year, there are an endless stream of manufacturers using hype for marketing. It wasn't until May 2015, when the Ministry of Culture implemented the "strictest standards" and strictly regulated clothing sizes and model attire, that everyone's focus began to return to the game itself.

Veteran player Koda started playing games in 1998 and has been playing for almost 20 years. Recalling the reason why he first participated, he said that in 2009, the Chinese agent update of "World of Warcraft" was delayed by two or three years due to the transition from Ninetowns to NetEase. He wanted to go to the scene to support NetEase. And to this day, when people mention Blizzard, they still think of "Warcraft". This long-established game manufacturer is still reaping the dividends from "Warcraft" and has begun film and television adaptations and e-sports.

"World of Warcraft" is not an exception. Pi Zilang, CEO of gaming platform Laoyuegou, believes that the biggest regret this year is that not many new products have been released. One player at the scene summed it up particularly well: The game category clearly feels like all online games, and it is no longer the offline carnival in the stand-alone era, but has evolved into an exchange market for two-dimensional pan-entertainment culture.

It is no longer what it used to be. Some companies come and go, and some companies flourish and then decline. If there are three key words to sum up the differences this year, they are: e-sports, going overseas and pan-entertainment. The game culture industry represented behind it has also rapidly climbed from a niche with an output value of more than one billion in the first year to a huge output value of 100 billion this year.

E-Sports: One side of sea water and one side of fire

At the 2017 venue, in addition to NetEase and Blizzard, three e-sports manufacturers, Tencent, Perfect World and Giant Network, gathered in the N2 Hall. Dota2, CS:GO, "Ball Battle", "League of Legends" and "Glory of Kings" and other competitions The gathering of similar mobile games makes the N2 exhibition area a veritable "e-sports hall".

Various competitions such as water friend competitions, star team exhibition games, and college leagues have attracted a large number of players to stop or even sit on the ground; the frequent airdrops of e-sports star players have triggered waves of craze. Even if the two players in the game are not the top professional players, the audience in the audience still stares at the game on the screen.

Audience sitting on the floor

On July 29, before the DOTA2 College League Finals officially started, the audience had already found their "seats" in front of the booth. Many spectators just walked around the venue in a hurry before returning to the N2 Hall to watch the game. One spectator did not even try out the game or receive peripherals. He just purchased the DOTA2 Series SteelSeries headphones sold by Perfect World in the E6 Hall. , and then returned to the N2 Hall to watch the e-sports competition.

To be honest, the floor of the exhibition hall is very hard, and it is not very comfortable to keep looking up at the big screen. But even so, there were still very few viewers who left midway. Some booths even provided gaming chairs.

Some manufacturers even provided specialized gaming chairs in front of their booths

If it were just on the booth, the performances and hot dances might attract many game nerds to stop and watch, but they would never be able to keep them in front of the same booth for several hours.

The two most prominent features of competitive games are viewing and competitiveness, but it is difficult for players to feel the fun of the game through a short trial period. Instead, they are more likely to become interested in the game while watching the game.

Therefore, game manufacturers come here to promote games, and the effect of events on e-sports people far exceeds other methods. Therefore, the more e-sports products there are, the more game manufacturers need to show the characteristics and fun of the game through more competitions.

In fact, it is not easy for e-sports events to attract players to stay for a long time. In fact, e-sports competitions have always been an indispensable part of the Internet. E-sports competitions have been held on site every year since the first session.

In 2011, with the development of the Internet, e-sports attracted more and more people's attention. The five major e-sports live broadcast media tended to cooperate, and domestic e-sports platforms continued to rise. In 2015, the WCA 2015 World E-sports Competition made its debut, with a large number of spectators in front of the booth. Incessantly, it far surpassed other gaming booths and became the most popular exhibition area in CJ that year.

2015 is enough to be a year recorded in the history of e-sports: many professional players retired and became anchors, and a large number of Korean LOL players entered the LPL league. These all indicate that China's e-sports industry is developing rapidly and competition is becoming increasingly fierce. "CCTV sports reports on e-sports", "TI5 prize money breaks historical records", "game live streaming platforms compete with each other", and "game anchors are worth over 10 million" are common news.

Since the era of "Warcraft 3", the number of e-sports viewers has been slowly accumulating. With the explosion of the live broadcast industry, more and more viewers are beginning to get involved in e-sports events and become involved in them.

That year, the live broadcast volume of the WCA exceeded 20 million in the first week. Now, as of the end of the China Qualifying Tournament on July 5, in just three months, the number of viewers has exceeded 220 million, with a peak of 9.8 million viewers in a single day, repeatedly setting new records for various domestic e-sports events. Record.

In 2016, the protagonists that attracted players' attention on the stage completely changed into professional e-sports players and the exciting competitions they presented. Even if there is no game in progress, the manufacturer will play the previous game videos. Even during meal time, it can attract a large group of players to sit in front of the booth.

E-sports audiences will be very involved in the content of the game. Players will often discuss the current situation and opinions of the game in the audience, or marvel at the wonderful operations and desperate counter-attacks completed by professional players. This is why they can grow up in front of the same booth. The reason why time stops.

Nowadays, even if it is not an ordinary college league where top professional players participate, the audience will still fully enjoy the fun and excitement brought by e-sports. According to the "Global E-Sports Market Report" released by a market research company, it was 385 million in 2017, of which 191 million were die-hard fans and the remaining 194 million only watched occasionally. By 2020, the total number of die-hard fans may increase by 50% to 286 million.

Even if the fire is a mess. However, veteran player Koda still believes that there are many problems in e-sports, and the business model of e-sports is unclear. Although the e-sports competitions of various game manufacturers are imitating professional sports events such as the NBA, they have not learned the essence of the NBA: the business ability to stably produce sports stars and continuously monetize. What's more, no game can have the lasting vitality of football and basketball.

The right to host e-sports competitions is firmly in the hands of game manufacturers. DOTA2's Wings won the sixth DOTA2 International Invitational Tournament (TI6), but League of Legends missed the world championship twice. There are many types of games, and the prime age for team members to participate is 16-24 years old. Many people may only be able to play one game in their career. But what if this game doesn’t become popular?

In the final analysis, e-sports is a means created by manufacturers to increase fan stickiness. And it is not perfect enough to provide complete commercial protection for professional e-sports players like sports stars. In the past two years, there have been reports of teams being underpaid.

Will e-sports still be so popular next year?

I often talk about it when I go to sea.

Whether it is on a forum or in a venue, “going overseas” has become a hot topic in the air.

On the one hand, from the perspective of the domestic market, NetEase and Tencent share more than half of the market share. The "China Game Industry Report from January to June 2017" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") shows that the game industry has a clear giant concentration effect. In 2016, NetEase's total game revenue reached 27.98 billion yuan, and Tencent's 2016 full-year game revenue was 70.844 billion yuan. The two accounted for 60% of China's game market revenue.

Judging from the layout of the venue, NetEase and Tencent firmly occupy the two entrances N1 and N2, which are also the locations with the most people. The "Honor of Kings" booth is always crowded, and many players queue up for a long time just to take a look at "Minecraft" and take a group photo at the "Onmyoji" booth.

"Minecraft" scene

On the other hand, although the overall actual sales revenue of the game industry in the first half of this year was nearly 100 billion yuan, reaching 99.78 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.7%. However, it is no longer a public fact that the number of game users is slowing down. The number of game users in China is 507 million, a year-on-year increase of 3.6%, and the growth rate continues to decline. According to data, in June 2017, the decline rate of mobile game users even reached 14.9%.

Mobile game user decline

This means that the demographic dividend of China’s game market is gradually disappearing, and the user scale will gradually stabilize. Major exhibitors are hoping to seek new opportunities in overseas markets.

Not long ago, there was news that "Honor of Kings" would enter the British market, and it also announced a strategic investment in British game developers at a high price of 156.3 million yuan to occupy the channel advantage in the British market.

Its games

Deng Hui, industry general manager of the Key Account Department, believes, “Last year, these game categories were mainly focused on strategy games. This year, in addition to strategy games, there are also ARPG (action role-playing game) games such as “Raging Wings” and so on. , has also achieved very good results around the world, with more and more popular game categories."

Perfect World CEO Xiao Hong introduced that Perfect World has been committed to internationalization many years ago: "For example, Brazilian youth are very interested in our "Red Cliff". We hope to have more friends together and through international business success, we can truly Dissemination of culture."

China Literature Group has just launched the international version of Qidian Chinese website this year. Wu Wenhui, CEO of Yuewen Group, said in an interview that Yuewen Group has been working hard to expand its overseas market territory and explore business models that are more suitable for overseas markets, hoping to promote China's "pan-entertainment" industry to the world.

Chinese game companies have successfully entered the relatively mature European and American game markets in the field of mobile games; the strategy game "King of Avalon", the card game "Young Three Kingdoms", and the music game "Piano Tiles 2" have performed well in overseas markets. .

China’s successful game in the Southeast Asian market. The person in charge of Play Southeast Asia is sharing

There are obvious regional differences in overseas expansion. Taking the North American market and India as an example, the mobile game markets of the two are faster than China, while the other is slightly behind. They are more like two sides of a mirror.

Partner and Vice President Gao Duo clearly analyzed the difference between the two: Action and strategy are the focus of the North American mobile game market. In other words, North American players prefer to challenge themselves and use strategic things to show their abilities; The Indian market is very similar to China a year ago, with cards, chess, and mobile games becoming popular in India.

Like the current situation of other industries going overseas, Chinese game companies may have a sense of pleasure in trying to "high-dimensional and low-dimensional" when going overseas, especially exporting to Southeast Asian countries. Countries such as India, Singapore, and Thailand have obvious demographic dividends and young population structures. , a country where mobile Internet has just started.

According to data provided by Mifei Technology, Indonesia, Brazil, and India account for a significantly larger share. They are all representatives of emerging markets. The governments of the three countries have a large amount of investment and policy support in mobile Internet. If you want to go overseas, you can consider these emerging economies that are experiencing dividends.

Report on Chinese games going overseas provided by Mifei

It seems to be a shortcut to copy China's established or practiced business models to other countries. But the fact is that the implementation of "localization" is a more urgent matter. If you want to do some self-contained mobile game markets in Europe and the United States, you especially need more localized and unique operations.

To break it down, "localization" means that Chinese developers have three needs when going overseas: first, understanding user needs; second, connecting with local resources; third, rapid iteration and constantly making adjustments based on user needs.

As a result, at the BTOB venue, there are many traffic companies and advertising and marketing service companies that help Chinese game manufacturers go overseas. For example, Miffy, etc.

An interesting case is that in addition to the quality of the game itself and its relevance to the destination country, some unexpected factors can also affect the promotion efficiency of a game.

For example, for some overseas countries with imperfect network infrastructure, the size of the game package may even become a key factor for users to consider whether to download. As shown in the figure below, this is the file size and download success rate provided by Mifei on its platform. Relationship:

The relationship between file size and download success rate

In terms of promotion, Chinese game manufacturers have also changed from focusing solely on download rates to now focusing on "integration of product and performance", which means they intend to export their brand image on the international stage. For example, in the first two weeks after a game is launched in an overseas market, traffic, downloads, and DAU will be purchased frantically to increase the popularity. But now, many people are also willing to do some effective advertising on and online, rather than just focusing on temporary data.

Pan-entertainment: a gathering of players from all companies

Pan-entertainment is one of the most obvious trends this year. When you visit the E6 Hall, you will even have the illusion of visiting a comic exhibition. To be more precise, they both attract the same people.

Pan-entertainment itself is one of the basic attributes of games. The abbreviation of the popular ACG culture in English, Comic, and Game. The linkage between AC and G has existed from the beginning. An IP is the basis and can have different forms such as novels, games, comics, animations, etc.

The post-95s and post-00s generations have become the targets that major manufacturers want to firmly grasp. In July of this year alone, there were three large-scale events in the hot East China to capture this group of users. In addition, there were the Maker Festival in Hangzhou and the World in Shanghai. The organizers were Taobao and Bilibili respectively. Positioning is all about showing your image to young people offline.

The pan-entertainment trend is also the official slogan. There is a reason why it is called China Game instead of China Game. Luan Xun, deputy general manager of the organizer Hanwei Xinheng, told Jiemian News that this year's positioning is "a comprehensive event with games as the core and covering animation, live broadcast, sports, music and other pan-entertainment fields."

Live broadcast is the most eye-catching existence among them.

A live broadcast platform registered in China, with anchors and users facing Japan, focuses on two-dimensional culture. Its marketing manager Song Tao told Jiemian News that although it does not engage in game business, many young people may come this time. Become a user. The exhibition area set up at BTOB also attracted a lot of business cooperation for Xu Tao.

"We want to be a platform for Sino-Japanese exchanges. Because the quality of the anchors on our platform is very high, we have signed more than 2,000 Japanese Internet celebrities." Xu Tao's company is trying to turn Internet celebrities on the platform into celebrities. There is already a Japanese sales company The toothbrush manufacturer approached him and asked if they could ask the anchor to help sell toothbrushes to China.

There is even a Japanese language learning institution on site

This cross-cultural output platform hopes to find its own value and generate business increments. Since it was his first time to participate in the exhibition, Xu Tao did not have enough preparation time. He only prepared a small part of many brochures, labels and peripheral gifts, and distributed them all on the morning of the first day. However, he got back a bunch of business cards, including Some have obvious intentions to cooperate.

National Live Broadcast put a Maserati sports car in the player hall. As one of the few live broadcast platforms in Shanghai, this exhibition held in front of its own home made National TV pay special attention to it.

Layla, the marketing department of National TV, told Jiemian News that the entire industry went through a reshuffle and rectification last year. There were more than 1,000 live broadcast companies last year, but now there are less than 200 left. Many people will question the live broadcast industry. At such an exhibition, it can bring confidence to industry observers and anchors. After many difficulties, the live broadcast is still popular.

The climax at the National TV booth occurred when Wang Nima arrived. At the end of last year, Wang Nima officially landed on the national live broadcast with the Baozou comics. On July 29, the well-known outdoor anchors Di Shi and Wang Nima connected with Xiaozhi (a well-known League of Legends anchor), attracting many fans to watch.

This is the second time that Station B, which is involved in game intermodal transport, has participated. This time, a group of the craziest players gathered in front of the booth for "Azur Lane" and "FGO", and there was a long row in front of the screen for the card-drawing game. Although it is a two-dimensional game, "FGO" has a huge lunar history behind it. Many people are crazy about history and Chinese and foreign classics in order to play this game. Judging from the game content, this game is not soft at all.

Station B booth

In May 2017, with the launch of an update to the FGO national server, the new Heroic Spirit Black Joan entered the card pool. The FGO national server topped the App Store bestseller list for the first time, "surpassing" "Honor of Kings".

Bilibili has successfully covered from the two-dimensional field to game intermodal transportation. According to Chen Rui’s interview with a Jiemian News reporter during BML, among the major sections of Station B, the game area is currently the largest source of traffic, even surpassing the video area.

Nowadays, there is an increasing distinction between the two dimensions and games on Bilibili. “We launched three games in the first year, and now we only launch around ten games a year.” As early as 2013, Bilibili was involved in game intermodal operations, and after the success of “Honkai Academy 2” Continue trading! Mobile game products such as "School Idol Festival", "Meruko Story", "Dream Kingdom and the Sleeping 100 Princes".

In terms of cultural publishing, don’t be surprised if you see “Assassin’s Creed” books for sale next time at Xinhua Bookstore. The adaptation of game IP into books has also formed a specialized industry chain, even if it is such adult content as Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed". Relay Publishing Co., Ltd., which is responsible for publishing "Assassin's Creed", also set up a booth at this year's expo.

Works from Jielie Publishing House

“Companies are now very fiercely competing for game copyrights, but the chain of adapting mature game copyrights into books is already very sound,” publisher editor Ma Xuan told Jiemian News. “This is also the first time we participate, and our target readers are also Mainly young people under 18 years old.”

Long road ahead

In the book "Games Change the World", the author (and game designer) Jane tells this story: About 3,000 years ago, Atys was king in Lydia in Asia Minor. One year, the country faced a great famine. The Lydians invented a strange method: use games to solve problems, eat one day and use games to restrain one day.

Relying on this approach, they survived for 18 years. During this period, common games such as dice and claws made of sheep joints were invented. Jane thus also attempts to solve social problems through the mechanics of running games. She believes that "World of Warcraft" is a typical collaborative work scene. People have spent 5.93 million years solving various virtual problems in Azeroth. There are about 80,000 articles in "World of Warcraft" and a huge amount of knowledge has been generated. Resources 50,000 people use it every month. This is a miracle created by Blizzard.

We play games neither to solve famine, nor to solve social problems. Most of the time, the evolution of the game industry will inevitably lead to social discussions on "addiction" and "losing one's ambition with things"; players will also be limited by the entanglement of self-control.

Partner and vice president Gao Duo knew it was hurtful to discuss counterfeiting at a gaming event. But he still shared the shocking fraud problem in the industry: cheating in mobile game promotion is becoming more and more serious, and abnormal clicks are becoming more and more powerful.

According to statistical data for the whole year of 2016 (the first half of 2017 has been calculated, but has not yet been announced), the proportion of abnormal clicks at the beginning of 2015 was 11%, and by the end of 2016 it was 35%. In May and June of 2017, abnormal clicks are now Click higher.

From the beginning of 2015 to January 2016, the channel activation data obtained every day had an abnormality rate of approximately 6%. At the end of 2016, this number climbed to 11%. Gao Duo pointed out that this "abnormality" means that the platform determines through the algorithm that there may be a problem with the data, which is abnormal.

Moreover, data falsification anomalies are most likely to occur during the summer, with July, August, and September being the most obvious. This is an unavoidable topic in this industry.

In addition, throughout the interview process, both players and industry insiders expressed their disappointment in domestically produced original games. The scale of the exhibition, the number of exhibitors and players are increasing year by year. The only thing that hasn't changed, or even declined, is the number of new game releases. IP speculation and game homogeneity are serious.

Mobile games make full use of everyone's fragmented time, but users' concentration, investment and sense of accomplishment are far less high than in the era of online games and stand-alone games. Take the current craze for mobile games as an example. Many games are simply mobile online games. The routines of making money, drawing cards, and hanging up are still the same, just put an IP shell and go online directly. It has closed on July 30, but the future of the gaming industry is still in flux.