Tencent WeGame： It does not coincide with the positioning of STEAM products.
When domestic game practitioners are in full swing in the field of mobile games, Tencent, which has a monthly active account of 868 million QQ, has quickly extended its reach to the stand-alone market. At the UP2017 conference, TGP announced its name change and upgrade to WeGame global game platform, which will provide comprehensive services of genuine distribution and game experience.
Why do you want to be a genuine stand-alone game distribution platform?
When it comes to stand-alone game distribution platform, people will inevitably think of STEAM, which has developed rapidly in China in recent years. As of the first quarter of 2017, STEAM has harvested 18 million China players, with a growth rate of 57% from the previous month, but its operator V Club has not officially landed in China. This is the joy and worry of STEAM players in China. The joy is that they can play the original works in the first time by bypassing the review, and the worry is that they are marginalized compared with players all over the world. The birth of WeGame has turned this joy and worry into anxiety. If Tencent makes some small moves for competition, can STEAM still play?
The domestic stand-alone market has been silent for many years, and Tencent’s admission may become a key node for breaking the game. At this moment, the market need not be too cautious-first of all, the beneficiaries of healthy competition are users and developers. In any case, WeGame will not make the domestic stand-alone environment more difficult. On the contrary, game dreams also need realistic nourishment. Secondly, the product positioning and target users of WeGame and STEAM do not coincide. For us, the biggest problem to be solved at present is how to sell global games to a considerable number of online gamers in China in a compliant way, and how to attract high-quality games to meet the booming content demand of its platform users. Therefore, WeGame’s business focuses on localized distribution services, the transformation and guidance of online game users, and the socialization and community ecology of players. Although STEAM has a first-Mover advantage among foreign developers and core players, for Tencent, WeGame has the largest distribution channel and user base in China, and 18 million yuan is obviously not even its "small goal". The strategic positioning and marketing strategies of the two are completely different.
"Under the huge distribution volume, how can we continue to attract different types of players with high-quality content and stick users firmly on their own platforms?" The sense of urgency in this bone urges Tencent to fully deploy all kinds of high-quality game content. It is a matter of time before we enter the stand-alone market, and the successful test of TGP, the predecessor of WeGame, in the stand-alone market, and Famine: Online Edition broke the sales record of one million, which made Tencent further confirm that the time has come and contributed to the birth of WeGame.
What changes will WeGame bring to China Single Machine?
Although there is a heated discussion on whether WeGame can gallop around the world in the STEAM forum, for WeGame, which has just started, the primary foothold is the China market. WeGame can help the world’s good games to open up the potential market in China, and publicly stating that it will give developers the space to polish independently and the resources to incubate and grow; At the same time, WeGame can also add a localization channel for domestic single-player players, give the huge online game army a vision pattern of contacting the vast game world, and jointly create the largest and most active community ecology in the world.
Specifically, WeGame will bring at least the following benefits to the stand-alone market in China:
1. Localized gaming experience
"Learn English well in order to play games" has always been the pride and helplessness of domestic stand-alone players, which to some extent defines that playing foreign stand-alone players is only the patent of minority elite players.
The entry of WeGame means that localization will become the basic service for the distribution of stand-alone games in the future. High-quality official Chinese version, social interaction without language barriers and smooth and stable national clothes are the changes of product experience from 0-1.
By removing the barriers of language and network delay, more China players can get an immersive experience in the game and fully feel the charm of stand-alone games.
2. Help excellent products get better market returns.
Although stand-alone developers have a sacred and unique position in the eyes of players, this has not affected the prevalence of piracy in China, nor has it changed the plight of domestic stand-alone developers, especially independent developers, who have difficulty in making a living.
Feelings can’t save the market. The best support for an excellent product is to let more people find and buy it. Tencent hopes to maintain the stand-alone ecosystem through WeGame, which not only encourages all kinds of stand-alone products to blossom, but also builds on the 200 million registered users accumulated by TGP in the past five years and the 900 million users owned by Tencent. The impressive sales results of products such as Famine: Online Edition, Tale of Stardew Valley, and City: Skyline, which were initially tested on TGP, have made people see the infinite potential of outstanding stand-alone works "standing on the shoulders of giants", and the ability to re-integrate omni-channel distribution has enabled more players who have never been exposed to stand-alone games before to see and like excellent stand-alone games. For WeGame, it is not.
3. It is possible to produce the most active stand-alone community.
Wang Bo, vice president of Tencent Group, mentioned in an interview after the conference that WeGame will help players communicate with developers more directly and simply by means of player community discussion, developer meeting (online/offline), core user exchange group in the game development process, and "user feedback and intelligent translation" in the developer self-service management system, which is one of the key points of the new version to be launched in July. For online game operators and players, the above functions and services are not unfamiliar, which is the basic skill of online game products to build a player community. When mature developers and operators restructure and apply the mature game community construction model to the stand-alone market, can they change the isolated island state of stand-alone players and let more players with ideas, willingness and ability to express participate in game development and community maintenance? Whether it can promote more interesting interactions and more stories between players and developers, and between players, players may wish to look forward to it.
4. Clarify the audit system and establish industry norms.
Just like from Haitao to cross-border e-commerce, compliance is the only way for overseas products to enter the China market and expand from the ascendant to the scale. The development of domestic stand-alone market may benefit from the stimulation of several "edge-ball" games, but in the long run, for domestic and foreign developers and domestic players, the final path will still point to the benign development in the sun on the premise of complying with policies and regulations. Since it is an inevitable road, WeGame, as the first platform tester, is undoubtedly more experienced in communication and cooperation with government departments with years of experience in successfully introducing a large number of overseas online games. It can help developers at home and abroad to clarify the audit system and establish industry norms more quickly. This means that more works can meet more China players in a compliant and localized way.
WeGame, build a new ecology with players and developers.
The development of stand-alone games can’t be achieved overnight. The popularity of head works can stimulate the growth of stand-alone market for a short time, but if we want to fundamentally improve the level of the whole industry, we need to build a benign ecosystem of mutual assistance among developers, publishers and players.
The seemingly simple words "localization, super-distribution, communization and construction of audit system" are the bottleneck that domestic stand-alone games have not broken through, and it is even more difficult to achieve without sufficient determination, patience and investment. Fortunately, when some people complain about the poor domestic environment, few games and difficult development, Tencent, as a practitioner, will not proceed from the immediate interests, but strive to find a fundamental solution and integrate its own superior resources to promote the sustainability and positive development of the whole industry.
After WeGame, a huge chariot, is put into operation, the connection, service and discovery will help developers at home and abroad to gain more market space, and also present more massive more innovative game content for players.