2025/02/21 17:20
In China's gaming circle, there is no "middle class"
2025/02/21 17:20
Text/Thomas's Skull
At the beginning of 2024, Grape Jun asked Ma Xiaoyi, senior vice president of Tencent, how he thought about the situation of the global game industry. That's because a lot of companies are doing focusing, he says, in removing products in the middle of the box:
"Those projects that can only be ranked in the top ten in the category and never have the opportunity to challenge the first and second places, just to achieve some short-term income, are better not to do it."
Now that a year has passed, nearly 20 second-tier listed game companies have announced their 2024 performance losses; After talking to many practitioners, I found that decent products have failed, and the situation of middle-level employees in game companies is becoming more and more difficult; The boss of a start-up company that raised hundreds of millions of dollars even left a sentence with Grape King: In the future game industry, there will only be top masterpieces and small games.
Whether it is a practitioner, a product, or a company, the middle layer of the gaming industry is under unprecedented pressure. In the current Chinese gaming circle, there is no "middle class".
01
In the past few years, there have been too many companies with more than 100 people in the industry who have increased their investment and wanted to rise to the top, but unfortunately have gone down.
A certain company has made numerical cards with a total turnover of more than 2 billion, once had more than 150 employees, and also rejected Tencent's investment with a valuation of 400 million. The boss said that he had a delusion at the time: starting a business is similar to "Dragon Quest". "Since I can do it from 10 to 20 people, then stick to it, to 100 people, 500 people, that is, sooner or later."
However, after the transformation and self-development, none of their key 3D projects have been made.
The two-dimensional project burned more than 40 million, and found that it was impossible to recruit good art, and it was impossible to roll up large factories, and the ROI of a small amount of investment could be 120%, but there was no profit as soon as the volume was increased; The pressure on the purchase volume of SLG projects is too great, 150-160 pieces of A, hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent, and a server will take 3 days before and after to import 5000 people.
After doing it for a few years, they burned 200 million, and the income of old products plummeted, and finally they cut more than a dozen people, and the track of All in was changed to a small game.
Another well-known company has made content-based games with a monthly turnover of more than 10 million, and has also taken investment from Tencent and several major Internet companies. At the hottest time in the industry, NetEase took 3 times the salary to poach their people, from top to bottom; Seeing that the second generation of small projects around them are upgrading the picture, and the fresh graduates are not going to go to big projects, they are determined to bet on 3D.
At that time, they had the illusion that as long as they improved their industrialization capabilities, they could cross the threshold of the mobile game market and be very close to the next stage.
The boss of the company recalled that the new project had done a round of paid tests of 10,000 people, and 80% of the second project was retained, and the ARPU was also very good-looking. A copyright fee of 40 million + advance payment was issued, but the team refused, because they felt that the monthly turnover could be at least 50 million. "I've already opened the champagne, and to put it mildly, I'm starting to look at the car."
But after the launch, they found out that something was wrong: "Many players charge money just to get double rebates, and then play for a month and run away." "The game's own problems, combined with external competitors, led to a rapid collapse of data. And when several products in a row were unfavorable, after spending 300 million in 8 years, they cut the team to only a dozen people, mainly relying on old products to continue their lives.
"During that time, I already had symptoms of anxiety somatization, and I cried and called investors, and I can only say that the effect is outstanding...... When you went out to raise money, you said that you were valued at 800 million, and others said that you were too modest. Now with a valuation of 100 million, no one may want to enter. ”
Similarly, the story of a small factory making a big gamble, but failing to break through is unknown. In the face of overcapacity and insufficient demand in the market, it is indeed too difficult to make a hit that surpasses the company's rank when encountering a mature technology cycle.
The CEO of a large factory said that it is not terrible enough to make a product, but what is even more terrible is that the current industry, the head manufacturers are gathering resources to create and maintain an evergreen game that siphons everything. In his opinion, there are several terrible things about the evergreen game:
First, evergreen games are generally gameplay-driven large DAU games, mainly paid by small and medium-sized R, and are less affected by the macroeconomy.
In his opinion, Big R payment is similar to visiting a luxury store, which used to be a brainless sweep, but now it has to be carefully selected; Paying in R is similar to going to a nightclub, which used to be every week, but now it only goes once a month; The payment of small R is similar to smoking, unless you are poor, rain or shine, it will not increase or decrease. Comparatively, evergreen games are less afraid of cycles.
A leading product producer speculated that the anti-cyclical ability of "The Battle of the Golden Shovel" is similar to that of board and card games
Second, Evergreen Games has accumulated a large number of content and users, so it has jumped out of the rules and restrictions of traffic platforms and maintained sufficient profit margins.
In his opinion, the advertising platform is an obstacle to the profits of new games: "It's similar to a wealth management product, the bank interest is 3%, and I only give you 4%", and it is not principal protected - the platform case will always make money, and you will always lose money. But Evergreen Games is different, its content has a lot of attention, so the platform will recommend it for free, instead of hijacking relevant traffic and selling it to you in turn.
Third, evergreen games must continue to grow. The general manager of a large factory lamented that when every evergreen game has a growth KPI, and the total population of the game and the market share of the game industry have not changed, that strong project can only get a few points of growth by killing 10 weak projects.
The cruelty lies in the fact that in a highly mature market, there are a few Douzong powerhouses in each mainstream category, producing massive quality content for experienced players to jump sideways repeatedly. Play all the Spring Festival version of the first two tours, which is enough to keep Ah Zhai at home throughout the holiday; There are more than 20 wild men to choose from; Not to mention Tencent's N Heavenly King, I don't know how many gameplay games have been swept.
In the face of this situation, many bosses have found a pattern: instead of betting on the probability of new projects, it is better to count on the growth of old projects. As Ma Xiaoyi said, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to become big DAU games, but the number of users occupied by big DAU games is increasing.
The owner of a company said that their producer wanted to set up a new project, but he felt that it was better for everyone to do their best and run the old project with good data for 10 years: "Otherwise, although the creation is very cool, you will find it more difficult when you have to hand in the homework." ”
There is also a boss who said that a large factory that used to be TOP 1 on the best-selling list, and later fell into the dust, was asked by the boss to increase by 10 times this year. "Is it difficult, you say? But it's easier than making a successful new game, right? ”
Over the past year, Supercell Brawl Stars has grown many times over all of its metrics, far outpacing many of their new titles
For individuals, this industry environment has also greatly reduced the upward path, because there are fewer and fewer new projects and new jobs.
The CEO of a company said that now the company that can't make money has no money to invest, and the company that makes money does not dare to invest, "There is not much difference between losing 500 million and losing 10 billion, but the difference between earning 500 million and earning 10 billion can be doubled." In his opinion, it is unusual for miHoYo to have so many new projects in parallel. If I were a big viagra, I would definitely move my investment to the old project, so that the winning rate would be higher...... Maybe their vision is different from ours. ”
As the gantry gets higher and higher, there are naturally fewer and fewer carp that can jump on it. More than one boss lamented that in this era, it is either all in, with a reduced probability, to continue to win huge returns; or devote yourself to mini-games and study more extreme cost performance; Medium-sized investment is likely to meet the end of loss.
02
Don't look at the friends below who can't climb up, but the friends in the middle, it's easy to slide down.
Let's start with the fate of practitioners. Once upon a time, everyone thought that as long as you became a producer in a large factory, it meant climbing the ladder and being able to determine the flow of resources. But now more and more producers are finding that their positions are not stable.
A producer who has made the top 3 hits on the best-selling list, jumps to a big factory to do a new project with a big IP and is cut, and the company only provides the option of lowering two levels and serving as the team leader (such as the main value); A producer of a large factory who has done 3A overseas has indeed joined a Shanghai Four Little Dragons as a team leader - when there are more monks and less porridge, it is easy to be demoted or even reduced if there is a slight disturbance.
There are also many producers on the verge of being eliminated by the times. A director of a major Guangzhou factory commented that there are many producers in their company, and the payment model, system and growth curve they are good at are outdated, so they have begun to fail continuously. If they can't continue to learn, don't play games, and don't understand games, they will be left in a bubble and have to leave the industry.
With the changes in the industry, the employment requirements are also changing. Nowadays, many company bosses have begun to talk about small games in the Beijing circle such as Diandian, Beta, and Crazy Games, and the "Fail Fast" model of overseas companies - take out 2 million to 3 million, and require the producer to release a demo in 3-6 months, and successfully pay a high penny, and fail to quickly eliminate. It is rumored that a leading small game company will take 30% of the profits to distribute to the team, half of which will be distributed to the producer, and the producer of the popular model can get 6 million to 7 million a month. But this kind of entrepreneur mentality of equal risk and benefit sharing is something that few producers can adapt to.
In the same way, some gamers who joined small factories in the talent war in the past few years to get promoted and raised, although their resumes are good and the flow of past projects is okay, once the results of the new project are unfavorable, and they want to change jobs, they will find that they can't keep their current title.
The chief planner of a large factory in Guangzhou told Grape Jun
After all, in the past two years, many big projects that seem to be certain to succeed have ended up in failure and layoffs. This has changed the career trajectory of many gamers, and it has also made many people reposition themselves.
The boss of a company with a turnover of more than 1 billion complained that the monthly turnover of the product was tens of millions, but the profit was almost zero. The profit of the last year is the sum of the annual salary of the laid-off employees. It's no wonder that many companies have begun to go under the knife for higher-paid executives, or to fight corruption for profits. A rumor is that after a leading factory reduces costs and increases efficiency, executives can only enjoy the travel standard of 550 yuan/night.
Once entered a large factory, it almost means that the future with an annual salary of one million is beckoning to you. But now, it's not like you can sit back and wait for the chicken dog to ascend to heaven when you enter the big factory.
Many employees of large factories said that last year's year-end bonus of the company was more Matthew effect, and like that year, there is no longer a situation where the projects that have not been launched are more than some of the projects that have been launched just by relying on the big pot of rice. As for how to get into the head project? It takes a bit of luck.
The logic of class slippage applies not only to individuals, but also to products and companies in the middle layer. Two years ago, a passage said by Guo Weiwei, CEO of Xishanju, and Grape Jun may have hit the pain points of many people:
"The life cycle of an ordinary product is about two years, or even shorter, so if the company has been using new products to continue its life, it means that as soon as the new product is launched, the company will start preparing for the next product. Once the gear is broken, the company is gone, and there is no way to accumulate technology and cultivate talents in this state, because everyone is always exhausted. Only by making a super product that can make enough profits and live long enough can game companies complete the leap and iteration. "
Without evergreen games, there will be no base areas, and we can only fight guerrilla warfare. The premise of creating an evergreen game is to create a hit first. And the previous path to create a hit model has almost all failed.
Buying volume used to be the king of prosperity for countless second-tier companies. But now, medium-to-heavy mini-games are stealing everyone's space. Pu Guannan, CEO of Xingchen Wushuang, said that the unit price of paying users of head mini-games such as "Seeking the Way" and "Shooting at Zombies" is as high as 2,000 yuan to 3,000 yuan, which is close to the median value of mobile games of 3,500 yuan. This eats up a lot of traffic from second-tier mobile games.
Just looking at the App Store's best-selling list, the results of "Gun at Zombies" are also impressive
Transformation mini-game? In the words of Chris, a partner at Game Trigger, the domestic mini-game has been rolled to the extreme, and the door has been firmly welded:
"Large manufacturers occupy the main delivery channels, sometimes even less than profit margins, and would rather lose money than seize the market, just to block the opportunities of small teams...... Even if you can break through the lockdown once, the question is - will your business model be sustainable? Relying on only one product, there is no clear direction for the follow-up, and it is likely to stagnate. "
In this track, it is necessary to compete with Sanqi and 4399 for traffic management, and also to compete with those companies with flexible bodies to seize the eyesight and hand speed of opportunities. In a certain Guangshen company that frequently produces popular mini games, all the personnel are subordinate to the middle platform, and the project is temporarily formed into a group, pointing to where to fight, and many bosses sigh that they can't learn: this kind of organizational structure is simply a natural skin change holy body.
One boss said he had been studying the game for half a year with executives, and finally decided to put in only one person. "In my company, I don't want to hear how to buy the volume of any game - I don't want to buy the game for the volume."
What new game should I make? Many second-tier companies are confused for a while. In this regard, the view of Lu Hongyan, chairman of Gigabit, is that only the market is analyzed, and only mediocre products can be made.
"Many producers still have the idea of analyzing what kind of products are more popular in the market first, and then when they feel that they have understood the research, they will make the product, and then test it after they are done to see if the data is good. I've always been against it. At the beginning of this year, I mentioned to all the producers in the company that such projects would be gradually phased out in the future. In Lu Hongyan's view, a good product must first impress himself. But in the last era, this was the last thing everyone cared about.
That's the embarrassment of many second-tier companies: buy volume? Can't grab the mini-game; By content? You can't do the best work. It can't be said that the skill is no longer good, after all, you can occasionally find a narrow blue ocean and make waves of small hits, but the rest of the games are almost smashed one by one, and finally found that you can only rely on the declining old products to continue your life, and you will fall from the current status of the rivers and lakes.
When the profit of a successful product is not enough to cover the deficit of several failed products, the previous logic of opening a treasure chest will naturally fail. This is probably the reason why nearly 20 listed game companies have announced their 2024 performance losses.
The CEO of a company lamented that the biggest difficulty in the industry today is that the profits are too thin and the room for error is too small. The CEO of a large Shanghai factory also said in the circle of friends that a product with a gross profit margin of 15% is already a very good product.
03
Is the huge Chinese game circle really unable to accommodate the "middle class"? Probably not. But if you only treat games as a business, then most game companies are destined to fall into the "middle-income trap".
The World Bank's interpretation of the term is that the reason middle-income economies struggle to reach high income is that they cannot compete with low-income economies in terms of human costs and rich economies in terms of cutting-edge technology development. In the game industry, the latter is the top game, and the former is a small game.
In the current supply and demand environment, if you want to get out of the middle-income trap, I am afraid you cannot rely on business logic, but on creative logic. As a cultural and creative industry, games have a natural advantage: they can not only meet demand, but also create demand. Just as before "The Wandering Earth" and "Nezha's Demon Boy in the Sea" broke through the ceiling, no one expected that Chinese science fiction movies and Chinese animation would have such a strong explosive power.
Of course, requirements are not easy to create in a vacuum, they require deep understanding and strong capabilities.
The boss of a large factory believes that there are no more than three teams that are qualified to break through in the future: a new efficiency weapon has been discovered in the AI era; The original intention of creation is very pure, and it can make products with completely different styles; Accumulate long enough in a certain field, and this field is worth continuing to cultivate.
Among them, efficiency improvement has its boundaries, and style success or failure has its probability, but accumulation can never be wrong. He believes that the current domestic game industry can refer to Japan, when the talent turnover rate is reduced, accumulation is more likely to occur. "This way the core team is not easy to disperse. As long as they get together, they get better and better over time. ”
"The only way to get stronger is for a group of people to stay together long enough." - Feng Ji, founder of Game Science
The rationale behind it is simple, it has been accumulated long enough to build unattainable barriers – as long as the needs to be met by this sub-category will not become obsolete and will not be easily replaced by other categories.
Wang Xiangbin, CEO of Dataeye, believes that if you want to succeed now, you must do things with infinitely high marginal costs, so that others dare not follow, "otherwise you will find that the era of 20% profit margin has passed, and you can only accept 6%-8% to do it." ”
The CEO of a large factory said that now the "more" logic has given way to the "most" logic, and the team needs to shrink the circle appropriately. For example, shooting is recognized as the Red Sea, and it is too difficult to make the best shooting game, and it is too difficult to make the best tactical competitive shooting game, so can you try to make the best anime-style tactical competitive shooting game like "Karabichu"?
The CEO of a medium-sized company did the math. Today, there are about 200 game companies with an annual turnover of hundreds of millions and hundreds of people. Among them, 10 companies are expected to become the top of the sub-category. This process requires strong strategic determination and business capabilities, as well as at least 3 generations of product effort. Now, many companies have completed the accumulation of 1-2 generations, and if it goes well, the next few years may see new teams enter the second line.
There is nothing wrong with accumulation on an individual level. Vivi, a game headhunter, said that many high-quality console projects now require key talents such as story setting and level/battle planning, with a background of long-term accumulation and in-depth research. Among them, the annual salary of the main plot is more than 800,000, and the maximum can be 2 million; There are more than one million main beauties with international aesthetics and creativity. And such a demand is directly directed at the old guns, and only candidates who are 35 years old, or even over 45 years old, may have enough qualifications.
Zhang Hanjin, president of Rubik's Cube, once said that the reason why they were able to make "Dark Zone Breakout" was because even if they did not have Dacheng, they still did shooting for almost 10 years. "When we talk about strategy, it's nothing more than what we decide what we want to do, and I have to do it. Other people do the same thing and compete with me, it doesn't matter, I'll do it; None of the others do it, only I do it, and I will do it too; It doesn't have to be a one-time success, or even a success, but I'll do it. "
When the accumulation is sufficient, all that is needed is a chance; But if the accumulation is not enough, it is useless to have any opportunities. As Feng Ji said, "The factors that affect the results are too complex, so the results are necessarily uncertain." The only thing we know for sure is choosing what we are doing – doing concrete things, doing difficult things, doing things we believe in. "
04
At the height of the talent war, the first thing a boss said to me was that the current industry looked really unpleasant: "Don't you think that many SBs have an annual salary of one million?" "
Looking back now, the game industry back then created an illusion: as long as the company worked hard, Lilith and Eagle Horn were close at hand; As long as the individual is rolled, luxury cars and large flats are at your fingertips; As long as the team works hard enough, it can't make "Genshin Impact", and it can also do a quarter of "Genshin Impact".
This illusion makes the industry very alive, but also anxious. The middle layer, which is less than the top and more than the bottom, is even more scrambling, and they all want to go to the next level, for fear of becoming an abandoned child of the times. To this day, this sentiment still has inertia.
In Chris's view, the reason why everyone is still rolling up is often because there is no choice: individuals don't want life to stagnate like this, small teams have to fight hard to find a way out, and large companies can't have no direction, because once they lose their goals, the team is easy to fall apart. "Some bosses may have made enough money and won't lose if they don't gamble. But what about the employees underneath? They haven't earned enough. When the company stagnates, the individual's future will be interrupted. "
As anthropologist Hadas Weiss puts it in We Were Never Middle Class, "There are far more people who consider themselves middle class than those who belong to the middle class." People who are above or below the middle class standard will identify themselves as middle class. Many scholars also believe that the so-called middle class is an illusion, and its existence will make everyone think that they have the opportunity to become or remain in the middle class, and continue to work hard for it.
Of course, the idea of "wanting to go to the next level" cannot be said to be wrong. But if all the value of life is anchored to it, I'm afraid the risk is a bit big. After all, in the beginning, many people chose the gaming industry just to do what they loved.
Chen Xinghan, the producer of "Light Encounter", told me a story. As a young man, he was very competitive and won a lot of competition. But after attending the University of Southern California, at an event, he listened to the trustees at the same table chatting about the presidential election, and broke out in a cold sweat while listening:
Here, a couple said I didn't vote for Obama because Obama wanted to promote the anti-oil bill, and all the oil rigs on the West Coast of the United States belonged to our family; A couple over there said I support Obama because Obama is going to reform health care and I have more than 50 hospitals.
There was also a couple on the side, and I thought to myself that I could understand their wealth, and it turned out that the man who had flown a spacecraft three times, was the spokesman and commander of NASA.
All of a sudden, I felt like I had lost at the starting line, and I couldn't be such a person in my life. If the life you care about is winning, then this thing is endless, Bill Gates and Bezos on it, you will never be happy.
The turning point of the times has made more people understand this truth.
A former cheerful Beijing producer, originally took the top IP to make an open world, and later the project was cut, he was silent in the circle of friends for a long time, and one day suddenly posted a sentence, from "Those Things in the Ming Dynasty": "There is only one way to succeed - to spend your life the way you like." ”
The owner of a game company that switched to single-player after a major layoff, and the EA version, which received a lot of praise, said that in retrospect, he actually left behind the most precious things. "I lost the size of the company, the personal returns, the mental health, but as a creator, I got stronger. And I have friends and partners who stay with me and have a good reputation in the industry. ”
Perhaps there is only one way to get rid of fall anxiety completely: to believe that happiness is a choice, and that it is only about us.
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