Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Who can help Tencent win the secondary market?

In the game industry, we often hear the names of one-party and three-party studios, and their definitions are relatively clear.

To take a simple example, such as Ares: the Gods of Twilight, which will be released in November, its developer, Santa Monica Studios, is wholly owned by Sony, so Santa Monica is naturally Sony's studio. Although games like Assassin's Creed and final Fantasy can be played on PS consoles, they only have a platform-level partnership, so they can be counted as tripartite.

As for the second studio sandwiched among them, it is often difficult to define, so it is easy to be ignored. Wikipedia gives the definition: "to accept the commission of other factories, OEM development of games as the main business." most of them have a considerable degree of game technology to maintain competitiveness, but do not have the funds, access or even their own brand products. " In other words, game outsourcing.

However, some people refer to companies that have asset relationships but maintain independent operating systems as second parties, and we will use this definition for the time being. From their functions, whether the game outsourcing or independent development of the studio is an important part of building an industrial system and product matrix for game companies, but also can cultivate talents for the game industry.

As the top player in the domestic game industry, Tencent naturally will not ignore the layout of this field. This competition counts the second-party studios that Tencent has invested in China after 2020, and selects 17 companies / studios that are related in business or may be related in the future to see what strategy Tencent has adopted.

01. The 17 studios selected by the two giants are basically owned by Tencent during the year 2021.

Among the 17 companies, Shanghai Longcraftsman Network and Zhejiang Ten Warriors were chosen by the two giants Tencent and NetEase and accepted the investment of Tencent and NetEase respectively.

Longshi Network, founded in 2018, received investment from Caesar Culture at the beginning of its establishment (the cooperation is over), and then received investment from NetEase at the end of 2020. In contrast, Tencent is the latest entrant and does not own more shares than NetEase. Strictly speaking, Longcraftsman Network should not be regarded as Tencent's second-party studio.

The main reason for its inclusion is that Tencent won the daily service distribution right of Manaheth Echo, the main product of Longshi Network, and even pushed it to the Japanese market together with "White Night Aurora", "Dragon Raja" and "Saint Seiya" at last year's Tokyo video game show.

At the same time, because of the obvious Japanese two-dimensional style of "Manaheth Echo", Tencent has reserved almost half of its online live broadcast for it.

However, the performance of the game was not ideal after the launch of the daily service in October last year, and a week after the launch of the national service in June this year, the daily service of "Manahisi Echo" was announced to be discontinued.

On the other hand, the ownership of the distribution right of the national service of "Mana Heath Echo" is also twists and turns. As early as 2020, Coconut Island Game, the publisher of Jiangnan Baijing, announced that it had won the distribution rights to the game and signed an exclusive agreement with TapTap for Android channels. However, when the national service was officially launched, the game was changed to the release of the sleeve game, which was monopolized by bilibili.

In view of the dismal performance of the products in Nissan, perhaps Tencent's relationship with the long craftsman network has become less close after this agency.

However, the long craftsman network in the "Manahisi echo" after the launch of its derivative product "Hankingdao shooting AR", the company is also starting to focus on AR game research and development direction. Considering Tencent's current layout in the field of AR / VR, the two sides may have cooperation on AR products in the future.

Another company, Zhejiang Ten Warriors, also started with two-dimensional games and has a close relationship with bilibili. The two-dimensional total fight hunting mobile game "Hunting moment" was released by bilibili, while the Ten Warriors also applied for the soft work of the "working Cell: big Battle" mobile game, which is suspected to be the "working Cell: big Battle" booked by bilibili.

But in addition to these two products, the games currently being developed by Zhejiang Ten Warriors, "bit rover" and "Dungeons and Dragons: the Chapter of the Beacon Fire" do not belong to the category of two-dimensional games.

At the same time, Zhejiang Ten Warriors also bought a stake in the Shanghai Youyi Entrepreneurial Incubator Management Partnership (Limited Partnership) initiated by Game Trigger and jointly established by NetEase, Eagle Horn and Youxing. From this information and geographical location, the relationship between Zhejiang Ten Warriors and NetEase seems to be closer.

Through the analysis of these two investments, Tencent invests in them for two purposes except for its products: first, it cannot allow its competitors to take the lead. Second, it is rumored that Tencent's valuation of Miha Tour is now about 300 billion RMB. After missing the opportunity to invest in Miha Tour, Tencent adopted a "wide net" strategy for two-dimensional game manufacturers to enter the two-dimensional game market through a less closely related second-party studio to avoid missing the next "original god".

Judging from the above table, Tencent's emphasis on two-dimensional games is "not relaxed".

02. In the table listed above, almost half of the two-dimensional game manufacturers are two-dimensional game manufacturers. Take Apegi Network, which has the earliest investment time, as an example. Its founder, Liu Zijian, once served as the head of distribution in the paper-folding network. After its establishment, the company received investment from Mihayou and Eagle Horn (Atomic Punk) one after another. It can be said that three of the four Little Dragons are all related to Apegi Network, which is a high-quality choice that Tencent must not miss.

Unfortunately, the last label of Apegi's women's mobile games has been booked since early 2021, but has not yet received a version number. Therefore, we cannot judge the R & D strength of Apegi.

Considering that Miha Youyou and Eagle Corner rarely issue as agents, it seems that Tencent is the player most likely to win the right to issue the "last license".

At present, it is Breaking Dawn Interactive that is most likely to expand the product line for Tencent. The company was established as early as the end of 2013, and its main product, Cang Blue realm, has been launched in China, Japan and South Korea, Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia and other regions, and the virtual tree maze, which has been produced since 2018, has also been approved.

Judging from the approval information of the version number, the publication and operation of "virtual tree maze" are both mutual love interaction (Beijing) technology co., Ltd., although it is a subsidiary of Wanda film industry, however, it maintains a close cooperative relationship with Tencent, and there is a good chance that Tencent will participate in the distribution of "virtual tree maze".

With the exception of Dawn interaction, almost none of the companies' research projects in the table have got the version number. However, the two manufacturers that Tencent invested in early 2021 have recently launched their products, which can also bring investment income to Tencent, which is the brain of sugar network and Tianjin empathy respectively.

Players who are familiar with the two-dimensional game will not forget the very hot "Cat City" before its launch in the middle of this year, but the performance after the game launch is not satisfactory.

The main reason why Tencent takes a fancy to sugar is more likely to be the "Food contract" launched by the sugar network in 2017, which still has a high score of 8.0 on TapTap in the past five years, and the product has also been recommended by editors in many countries and regions of App Store and Google Play20. (the secondary reason may also be that Tencent later launched a mobile game with the same theme, "Shiwuyu".... )

The brain of Tianjin synaesthesia, another company, may not be that familiar, but its game brand is binary games, and their new film, "transition Traveler", was launched just before the National Day.

It is worth mentioning that Jia Fei, the founder of dual Games, is also one of the shareholders of the Shanghai Youyi Entrepreneurship Incubator Management Partnership (limited partnership) mentioned earlier. At the same time, he is also the former Beijing Dragon Boxing Storm COO, "Dream Link" project chief producer, and the core members of the binary game are basically from the "Dream Link" project team. However, although he left Longquan Storm, Jia Fei still holds shares in Longquan Storm.

Earlier in the interview, Jia Fei revealed that the overseas distribution rights of the research project "Code: stars" have been signed, and there is more than one, most likely to adopt a sub-regional distribution strategy. And Tencent may be one of them.

There are also two-dimensional projects in the table, such as Xuanxing network, argon purple network, Shanghai Baja network and so on.

Xuanxing Network's research product is a female costume game called "resplendent Journey". In the middle of this year, the argon purple network's two-dimensional project "Yanguang-Horizon" was rumored to have led to the disbandment of the project due to lack of funds. The progress of the "the Winter Solstice Project", which has been registered as a soft book, has not yet been disclosed.

As for Baja Network, at the beginning of its establishment, the company's main business was animation game development, but after Tencent bought a stake in September last year, the legal representative of Baja Network was replaced by Xu Yuhui, and Tencent's stake reached 55%.

Xu Yuhui, a former release producer of "Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils Mobile" and "Naruto Online Mobile", has focused on functional games in Tencent since 2018. He was the release producer of Tencent Interactive Entertainment Star Yao Game products Department, Secretary General of the Secretariat of popular Science Game Alliance, and Assistant General Manager of Tencent Social value Exploration Center. From this point of view, we do not rule out the possibility that the Baja network will shift its business direction to functional games.

03. Industry veterans gather under its command, of course, while exploring new directions, Tencent also invests in studios led by a number of industry veterans, but it seems to be aiming at a two-dimensional direction.

Since the beginning of 2021, the rise of "original God" and the large number of bytes have all made Tencent feel crisis. In the field of game investment, Tencent and byte are fighting like raging fire, and Youerha technology is one of the members involved in this "war".

Rumor has it that after byte bought Youai Mutual Entertainment, some teams ran away to set up Youerha Technology. And Tencent has had some unhappiness with Youai mutual entertainment because of the "command & conquer：red alert ol" project, coupled with the acceptance of byte investment, which also makes the two sides have a stronger smell of gunpowder.

To some extent, Tencent's participation in the two rounds of financing of Youerha Technology may also have some "angry" elements in it. At present, Youerha Game has set up Shanghai R & D Center and Beijing Art Center, with three products under research: "Code: CNC", "Code: PAC" and "Code: IDLE". The first two are SLG products and the latter are secondary products.

And Youerha Technology also received investment from Tencent in the same period, including Xinghai Mutual Entertainment and Deep Blue interaction. The founder of the former is Jiao Haiming, who participated in the research and development of Wendao at Gibbit and then served as the lead planner of Genghis Khan.

In 2013, Jiao Haiming went northward to establish the Beijing Miracle era, developed rounds of hand-made games such as "Magic Age" and "Wu Shen Zhao Zilong", and gradually involved in the field of two-dimensional games.

Judging from the current recruitment information of Xinghai Mutual Entertainment, the company is developing a Western Fiction-style two-dimensional open world MMORPG game, and the choice is precisely the most popular track at present.

The current product progress of Deep Blue Interactive is clearer, and its main product is "back to the Future: 1999" recently attracted a lot of attention in the second-dimensional circle with its unique Western background setting and English dubbing.

The reason why there is such a differentiated design is that Deep Blue Interactive has a strong R & D team. Zhou Jian, the founder of Deep Blue Interactive, once worked as a producer in Baiao Family interaction, while most of the company's core members came from popular secondary products such as Shiwuyu and the Law of Creation. it is not too much to say that this company is born with a little Tencent genes.

In mid-2021, perhaps because the edition number was suspended, Tencent gradually slowed down the pace of investment, investing in Sunshine Technology, Chengdu Xingqi play and Black Sands Entertainment in June, July and August, respectively. its founders are from Ali Games, celadon Games and Xishanju.

Among them, daylight technology mainly focuses on the field of two-dimensional games, while Chengdu Xingqi and Black Sands Entertainment devote themselves to card cards and the ARPG track. In particular, Black Sand Entertainment, whose team members are mainly from Xishanju and Sheng fun games, the research and development product "Moon Night Rhapsody" is also commissioned to be produced after obtaining the license from KONAMI, while another product, "Service Soul", has not yet been clearly released.

As for the last investment in 2021, Chengdu Ophiuchus Technology Co., Ltd., founded by Tencent, is 90% owned by Tencent, and Fu Kun, manager of Ophiuchus Technology, used to be the producer of the Digital Sky "Project DT" project.

Digital Sky used to be the publisher of Girl Frontline, and since 2016, Digital Sky has devoted all its resources to the development of the mainframe project. "Project DT" is the first product to be announced after the transformation of Digital Sky. The project was established in 2019 with the theme of eschatological sci-fi mecha and the positioning of "high-speed combat" ARPG.

Considering that Tencent began to integrate overseas resources into the development of 3A mainframe games in the middle of last year, it will not miss domestic investment opportunities, and Tencent will probably continue to increase its bets in the field of mainframe games before there are actual results.

Conclusion: on the whole, Tencent has focused on the two-dimensional field through a number of investments since 2020, in order to make a breakthrough in this category, but so far it seems to have achieved little success.

Starting from the second half of 2021, Tencent began to gradually turn its attention to the field of console games, and began to focus on overseas layout, especially invested in a number of second-party studios overseas, and included its products under Level Inifinite.

After the reshuffle of the game industry from the beginning of 2021 to 2022, Tencent's investment strategy has gradually changed from two-dimensional games to overseas and mainframe games. Maybe in a few years, we will see the competition between Tencent and Microsoft Sony Nintendo in the mainframe field.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:Coreesports, author: Qian Hongyan

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