What Is The Moat Of Tencent Game?

In China's game market, Tencent's position needs no more words. In the head players, except for individual manufacturers, most others have established cooperative relations with Tencent. But behind this seemingly harmonious market environment, there is a hidden crisis.

On the one hand, Internet giants such as byte jump and Alibaba have begun to develop their own games. They have sufficient funds and a huge flow pool, and the conditions for self-study and spontaneity are ready; on the other hand, Tencent's pace of game has gone abroad, and its vision is no longer limited to China, and the overseas market competition is far more intense than that in China.

Facing these challenges, what is Tencent's moat? Some people say it's R & D capability, while others say it's channel capability. On this issue, I prefer the result discussed with an industry person: Tencent's moat is the ability to continuously build blockbusters.

And this, in fact, is an important standard to measure whether a game manufacturer is really powerful. In the past few years, there have been some popular products made by other manufacturers in the market, but in the end, the products are either a flash in the pan, or these game manufacturers have not made a sequel, so the aftereffect is weak.

To say positive case, Netease game is one. As Tencent's most powerful competitor in China, Netease has demonstrated the ability to continuously create blockbusters. In addition to the early "dream journey to the west" and "Dahua journey to the west" series, it also launched some popular products such as "Yin Yang master", "wilderness action" and "the fifth personality".

Tencent, Netease can continue to create a blockbuster, relying on the understanding and shaping ability of game IP. Tencent has been doing pan entertainment for so many years, and has developed Internet, animation, film and other businesses, which can be regarded as the IP source of game products.

Why do products around IP more likely to become popular, because everything can be called IP, that must be tested by the market. The survey of Gamma data shows that IP game users pay more attention to the cultural community, and 71.6% of IP game users are paying attention to the community constructed by cultural content.

The early game user community is mainly composed of Baidu Post Bar, official forum, QQ group, etc. users gather in a specific cultural circle, and the community is only used to serve the core user group. However, with the rise of new social software and video platforms such as microblog, wechat, station B, and tremor, users can freely forward or share game content, especially IP adapted products. The scale and aggregation of fans are stronger, and users are more willing to spread information related to game content.

It is no exaggeration to say that the future of the game market is to get the IP world. Tencent games also know this truth, so its strategic thinking in self-developed games is to create products around IP. However, the quality of IP also has the difference of high and low. Not all game products based on IP can become popular.

For Tencent games, it does not lack IP resources, but the key is how to find and cultivate IP suitable for game form. The development of each IP is not static. It may become popular from unknown or disappear from unknown.

At this time, looking for IP with higher cultural value has become a "shortcut". Especially the combination of IP and traditional culture, because the traditional culture has been handed down from ancient times, it is a cultural IP with great vitality. Therefore, we can see that "glory of the king" has been implanted into the culture of the Three Kingdoms, and QQ dazzle dance has also been combined with the peacock dance.

In the view of Ge Jianxiong, a famous historian and senior professor of liberal arts at Fudan University, games can become an expression of culture and everyone's self-expression. "The ultimate goal of human expression is not only to transmit information and knowledge, but also to express and exist. From this point of view, the game is a good expression. People are training their thinking logic or receiving education, and they are also looking for their own way of expression. "

From the perspective of expression, it actually puts the value of the game in a higher position. Back to IP itself, Tencent group vice president Cheng Wu pointed out, "looking around the world, whether it is the game of power or Marvel hero series, the value of these classic IP has been continuously amplified in the process of transforming from novels and comics to new media such as film and TV series and games, and the audience has also gained a value-added emotional experience. This is the charm of IP continuous construction. "

So the relationship between IP and game is also shaping. If IP and game are deeply connected, the pattern of the game market is also changing, especially for latecomers, the threshold and competition barriers of this industry become higher.

"2020-2021 mobile game IP market development report" points out that in recent years, the high-value IP suitable for changing into mobile game was purchased by game enterprises a few years ago. However, the production of high-quality IP is limited, which needs a long time of creation and fans accumulation. At present, the liquidity of high impact IP is weak.

In addition, with the highlight of the value of IP products, the amount of IP authorization is gradually increasing, and the authorized amount of tens of millions of yuan has become the norm. The risk of capital R & D undertaken by game enterprises in developing IP products has also increased significantly. Therefore, for those game enterprises with IP reserves, there will be more market opportunities.

And this is the moat of Tencent games.