How much money can Xiaole make? The answer may surprise most people: this kind of low difficulty games for teenagers to fifties and sixties have more gold absorption ability than many 3A productions and end games. At the beginning of this month, Activision Blizzard released Q4 financial report for 2021. This is also the first financial report after the news that it will be acquired by Microsoft. According to the financial report, among the three divisions, Blizzard, which is more familiar to domestic players, was hit by the most unknown king with a net income of $684 million and an operating income of $385 million. Another big brother, dynamic vision, also lost to King's 56% operating profit margin and 240 million monthly life. Activision Blizzard 2021q4 financial report, tuyuan NGA You know, what Activision holds is the "call of duty" series IP. Even if Blizzard is rotten now, it also has the blizzard family bucket that was once brilliant. King, a studio with little reputation, is only a series of "Xiaole" games called "candy legend" in Chinese. For another example, the revenue of well-known game manufacturer cdpr in 2020 when it officially launched cyberpunk 2077 is only about $580 million. This kind of game, from the first appeared on the web page to the mobile phone, has lasted for more than ten years. Today's gold absorption ability has subverted people's general cognition of "small games". 1 "Xiaole" global gold absorption In this Q4 financial report, Activision Blizzard specifically mentioned that "thanks to King's largest IP, candy legend increased by 20% year-on-year in the fourth quarter, and King's in-game net revenue increased by 14% year-on-year, reaching a new record in the fourth quarter. Candy legend is the game IP with the highest revenue in American app stores for 18 consecutive quarters." This revenue beat the "Xiaole" of "original God" and "Baoke dream go", which is not just a flash in the pan. In fact, since its launch, it has been "harvesting" players all over the world for more than ten years. In 2011, a small team of only five people under King, a casual game manufacturer, began to develop an experimental elimination game, which was finally named candy legend. At that time, none of them thought that the game would create a new upsurge. In April 2012, "candy legend" logged into Facebook platform and was released on smartphone platform in November of the same year. In the following six months, this candy packaged Sanxiao game had 46 million monthly active users and $62 million in monthly revenue around the world. And ranked the top three in the app store revenue list in 2014, ranking the champion and runner up in the Google play game download list. At that time, strategic tower defense was the mainstream mobile game market, and the dark horse "candy legend" shot out of thin air entered the vision of major giants. In 2015, Activision Blizzard bought king for $5.9 billion. At that time, no leisure game developer could be so valuable, which was largely due to the nearly $100 million revenue brought by candy legend every quarter at that time. The $5.9 billion acquisition of a "xiaoxiaole" is like finding a treasure for Activision Blizzard. In the following years, consumer games did not decline at all, and King has always been the main force of Activision Blizzard's revenue. In the third quarter of 2021, each revenue data of King reached the first of three divisions, which was joked by fans as "Xiaole big brother and two younger brothers rushed to the list". Activision Blizzard 2021q3 financial report, tuyuan NGA Although the legend of candy has flourished abroad for more than a decade, it has suffered some setbacks when entering the Chinese market. After being represented by Tencent in 2014, it withdrew from the Chinese market after the expiration of the contract in 2020 due to tepid conditions. Now, what domestic players can play is the upgraded version of candy legend represented by Netease treasure boat game. One of the main reasons why the market could not be opened at first was that at that time, China had its own three types of popular games: happy Xiaole under Le element. Le element is a leisure game developer in China. It has just obtained 35 million financing by virtue of "happy series" games. The main investment institutions are DCM China and Junlian capital. How popular is happy Xiaole in China? When the mobile platform was launched in early 2014, it rushed to the top of the app store download ranking in China, and occupied the champion of Android revenue and download in China for more than half a year. Eight years later, it still hasn't fallen out of the top 20 in China. Happy Xiaole? Ranking trend in recent year / Qimai data According to Qimai's data, the average daily income of "happy Xiaole" has reached $200000 in the last 30 days. It can be seen that no matter at home or abroad, the three consumer games are the same in their exuberant vitality and amazing revenue; Behind this, there is also a common gold absorption logic. 2. Interlocking, recharge trap Most of the three consumer games are free games. The main way to make money is to buy and recharge in the game, such as buying props, physical strength, etc. Generally speaking, their unit price is not particularly expensive. For example, the cheapest way to buy gold bars in candy fun is only 6 yuan, and the next level can be unlocked by paying $0.99 in candy legend. Screenshot of candy fun The reason why "Xiaole" can realize huge revenue through low unit price is that they are always leading the players from the core mechanism to the level design. The first point is the fragmented game time. "The fastest time for Xiaole level is only 30 seconds to 1 minute, which can meet our fragmented entertainment needs. For example, taking the subway for 10 minutes at work and playing Xiaole for a few games when bored, but it's very embarrassing if you want to play the king." One player said. The extremely fast game process allows players to take it as a way of entertainment at any time and place, but they need to pay a certain physical strength for each game. In candy fun, you need to pay 5 points of physical strength for a level, and the upper limit of physical strength is 25 points, which means that the number of games is only five. "It's time for fun in the fifth inning. Maybe someone else's king has just chosen a hero." When physical strength runs out quickly, either wait for 1 point / 6 minutes of natural recovery; Or fill a 25 yuan gain pack and have unlimited physical strength for two hours. Secondly, the difficulty of eliminating game levels often rises in steps. How easy it is to pass the customs in front, and the difficulty in the back can make you doubt your life. The most common situation when playing Xiaole games is that "all can be eliminated by the last step", but it takes 10 gold bars to obtain the opportunity of five additional steps, so someone will choose to spend 6 yuan to avoid spending a week at this level. This is a typical impulsive consumption psychology: when the player finally approaches the target, he will feel a kind of excitement. However, when he finally fails to make a move, it is easy to urge him to recharge the props to eliminate this regret. At the same time, when the number of shortcuts becomes more, it will breed another sense of superiority of players: "you can spend a small amount of money to reach the ranking, why do you want liver?" Most of these games can be bound to social platforms, and ranking with friends also stimulates this psychology. However, the first five steps need 10 gold bars, and the second 20 gold bars Until you touch the bottom line of player consumption. By that time, the game has already made a lot of money, and most other recharge items such as special props have a similar logic. In addition, in game design, players can have a sense of decompression through rewarding sound effects and explosion effects, and even "can't stop" and so on, which is also one of the "Yang schemes" commonly used by developers. Behind the seemingly simple elimination pattern, players have actually embarked on the recharge road laid by the game factory since playing the first level. 3 market sinking, "crowd tactics" Wang Haining, the founder of happy Xiaole, once mentioned in a speech in 2018 that their game payment rate is less than 2%, and half of the paying users will not spend more than 6 yuan a year But when the user base comes up, all this is not a problem. In addition to the internal game design and psychological induction, the most important part of the profit of consumer Games lies in its user group. At a time when 3A masterpieces are everywhere, most game manufacturers are targeting young men with strong consumption power. Because of its simple playing method and low threshold, the three consumer games naturally have a neglected game sinking market. According to the official statistics of happy Xiaole, happy Xiaole has about 800 million users in China and more than 100 million monthly users, of which 66% are female players living in third and fourth tier cities. At the same time, another special gamez data also shows that in terms of age distribution, the age group of Sanxiao users is concentrated in 35-54 years old. A friend nearby told zinc finance that his mother's favorite entertainment after dinner in recent years is to wear reading glasses to play Xiaole, and "can't teach her or call her. It's urgent to touch it." Do not ignore the spending power of these groups. According to the mobile game report released by oppo in 2019, post-60s players love happy Xiaole best, and the per capita recharge amount is three times that of post-00s. For some smaller three consumer game developers, the more realistic significance of user groups for them is advertising revenue. Since the emergence of Sanxiao game, it has been regarded by many people as an excellent carrier for advertising: just restore your physical strength or add an option of "watching 30 second advertising" to the condition of "five more steps". According to the data analysis of game advertising platform upltv, for the three consumer games with high difficulty, players consume a lot of props in the game. Therefore, there are more times to watch advertisements to obtain rewards, and the revenue from incentive advertisements accounts for about 60% - 80%. For the less difficult three elimination games, because players hardly need to consume props, and the clearance time is short, the speed is fast, and the probability of triggering screen insertion is relatively high. Therefore, such games are dominated by screen insertion advertising, accounting for more than 60% of the revenue. Although head games will not use this means that may reduce the user experience, it can be said that this is the revenue channel of most small three consumer games. For them, user stickiness is not a particularly big problem. After all, they have delivery objects of almost all ages. In the 10 years from the birth of candy legend to the present, the three consumer games have become an extremely unique existence even in the game field with simple light volume playing method and long-lasting high revenue. It can be predicted that as long as there are still vacancies in the mainstream game market, consumer games can always play the role of filling the market, and the "gold absorption fever" can continue for a long time. (Xinhua News Agency)