In the latest issue of SensorTower's overseas mobile game revenue list, the SLG mobile game "Age of Empires Mobile" published by Tencent's overseas brand Level Infinite appeared in the 23rd position.

According to gamma statistics, last year, among the top 100 products in the overseas market revenue of China's self-developed mobile games, SLG games accounted for 38.9%, and the cliff-like lead accounted for 16% of role-playing games.

If it wins this track, it will undoubtedly greatly promote the globalization process of Tencent Games, and now, "Age of Empires Mobile" seems to be that ticket. So, what kind of product is it? How did you break through in the already competitive overseas SLG market?

01

Overseas Special Edition "Return to the Empire"

When talking about "Age of Empires Mobile", we have to mention "Return to the Empire". Although Brayden Fan, head of the TiMi studio team, said in an interview with foreign media PocketGamer that "Age of Empires Mobile" is a product jointly developed by Tencent and World's Edge Studio, the development team of "Age of Empires", and the two are independent of each other, but anyone with a discerning eye can see that they are highly similar, at least in terms of art, the two can be regarded as "twin brothers".

"Return to the Empire"

Age of Empires Mobile

To this day, in the field of realistic 3D, there is still no SLG that can beat "Return to the Empire" or "Age of Empires Mobile" in terms of graphic expression, and because there are few products in the overseas SLG market that set foot in the field of realistic 3D, "Age of Empires Mobile" has further amplified the competitiveness of "Age of Empires Mobile" in terms of art.

But in fact, after getting my hands on it, the author found that "Age of Empires Mobile" is indeed not as simple as "Return to Empires" changing its name. For example, Age of Empires Mobile optimizes the game experience in the beginner introduction stage, dismantling and dismantling the early "urban construction and development" and "land leveling and land reclamation" processes, and interspersing them with the new RPG gameplay, so as to create a mild early experience.

In addition, Brayden Fan also said in an interview that Age of Empires Mobile does not reset players' development progress at the end of each season. Considering that most overseas users have not experienced the re-education of the "rate-like" season system, and their acceptance of the cultivation mechanism that needs to be restarted is not high, "Age of Empires Mobile" chooses not to reset the cultivation progress is also more in line with the needs of players.

In a word, "Age of Empires Mobile" is a more market-oriented overseas special edition of "Return to the Empire" that takes into account the development trend of overseas SLG categories and the needs of users.

02

Maximize the value of IP

Let's turn our attention to the issuance side. As you can see from AppGrowing's International Edition Appointments Overview, Age of Empires Mobile opened pre-orders on the AppStore and Google Play in most regions as early as the end of February this year. Going back in time, the official Facebook account started operating at the end of 2022 and now has 230,000 followers.

Source: AppGrowing International

Normally, SLG doesn't over-front-load pre-orders and community building, but Age of Empires Mobile is a big IP like Age of Empires, which can better unlock the potential value of the IP and leave enough time for the game to be widely distributed among the fan base.

In addition, the buying action of "Age of Empires Mobile" is also more advanced. AppGrowing International observed that in early August, Age of Empires Mobile began to experience a low but continuous and slow-growing campaign; In the month leading up to launch, the number of ads served per day increased significantly, from 200 to 500, and after the launch, the number of ads placed in a single day increased to nearly 2,500 groups.

From the perspective of the market, "Age of Empires Mobile" mainly targets Europe, the United States and high-tech regions with higher IP influence and more value, and the top 3 overall launches are Germany, France and the United States. It's worth noting that as it approached launch, the game increased its investment in Japan and South Korea, two regions with a high degree of SLG market development. According to SensorTower, on the first day of launch, in addition to topping the overall double-end download list in the United States, the game also topped the total Google Play download list in South Korea and the mobile game download list in the Japanese App Store, which shows that the importance of the Japanese and Korean markets is worthwhile.

Source: AppGrowing International

Specific to the material creativity, most of the materials can be disassembled into a two-stage structure of "highlighting the IP at the beginning, emphasizing the inheritance and development of the game to "Age of Empires", and then moving to the introduction of gameplay content, but the specific presentation methods are different, and there are three more representative ones.

One is to show the graphics of the desktop game and the mobile game by contrasting the images, which can not only evoke the nostalgia of players, but also show the relationship between "Age of Empires Mobile" and "Age of Empires Mobile", and at the same time show the progress of the mobile game in terms of graphics performance through intuitive comparison, and convey the competitiveness of the artist. It is worth mentioning that such videos are often accompanied by real-life explanations to make the content more appealing and convincing.

Source: AppGrowing International

The other is to promote directly through the mouth of KOLs, the content form is similar to live broadcasts, the KOL is located at the top of the screen, and the game content is displayed below, and the opening also emphasizes the relationship between the game and Age of Empires, and then introduces the selling points of the game. In order to reach as many users as possible, Age of Empires Mobile collaborated with a number of KOLs to release many similar materials.

lAnother is to recreate some classic elements of "Age of Empires" in the form of live-action melodrama. For example, in the following video, the monk changed the hostile mood of the passerby through preaching, and the detail is that the passerby was wearing a red suit at the beginning, and after being proselytized, he changed to the same blue as the monk, which corresponds to the setting in the game that the monk converts the enemy and changes the other party into his own faction color.

Source: AppGrowing International

It's worth mentioning that Age of Empires Mobile doesn't feature a few of the popular sub-gameplay materials. Considering that there is no corresponding gameplay in the game, rash adoption may be countered by false propaganda; In addition, the purpose of buying sub-gameplay is to attract as much volume as possible, and if you can activate the huge fan base accumulated by the IP of "Age of Empires", you can also get huge traffic.

03

Exclusive to Tencent's SLG ticket

In the past few years, Tencent's SLG mobile games have not had a strong presence in the top position in China, and they have been absent for a long time due to the late layout overseas. But this does not mean that Tencent does not pay attention to this track, on the contrary, it can be seen from the following table (2017-2024 Tencent SLG statistics) that Tencent has a deep obsession with this category.

In 2017, Tencent obtained the game engine license for "Clash of Kings" from Zhixingtong, and launched "King of the Troubled Times" based on it. With the skeleton of a blockbuster, "King of the Troubled Times" lived up to expectations, and remained in the top 10 of the best-selling iOS games for several months after its launch, and ranked ninth in the 2018 TOP10 of the world's most profitable mobile games jointly released by Gamma Data (CNG) and Newzoo.

But Tencent is not satisfied, on the one hand, although "The King of Troubled Times" has performed brilliantly, it has not yet reached the point where the winner takes all, and this track still has the value of mining; On the other hand, the "rate-like" represented by "The Shore of the Land" is gradually becoming the mainstream, and the old SLG market structure is being reshaped.

So we can see that since 2017, Tencent has had SLG products come out every year. In addition to adjusting product strategies in line with market trends, such as the shift to "rate-like" in 2020, the "lattice" gameplay began to retreat from the environment, and quickly followed up with the concept of "free marching". Unfortunately, although there is no shortage of products with outstanding performance in the early stage, Tencent has not been able to run a fist product that can firmly rank at the top of the track.

However, in the past, Tencent's main focus was on China, and the results of "Age of Empires Mobile" have allowed the industry to see the possibility of Tencent in overseas markets. In the future, if the long-term operation capability of "Age of Empires Mobile" is verified, then Tencent may use this as a template to quickly build its own SLG overseas advantage with more world-class IPs.

To a certain extent, this "IP+SLG" style of play is a unique admission ticket for Tencent, not only because Tencent itself has huge resources, but also because of the investment and cooperation in overseas markets over the years, which has greatly expanded Tencent's influence in overseas markets and given it more opportunities to access those top IP resources. In addition, Tencent's own mature mobile game commercialization system has also made more overseas manufacturers willing to reach more in-depth cooperation with it in the field of mobile games.

In fact, in addition to "Age of Empires Mobile", Tencent now has "Command & Conquer: Legions" adapted from the "Command & Conquer™" series of IPs and "World Qiyuan" adapted from the "Civilization" series of IPs, both of which are not inferior to "Age of Empires" among global players.

In the future, whether Tencent can use "Age of Empires Mobile" to go overseas and promote its global layout to a higher level is undoubtedly worthy of our continued attention.

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