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

The more skin out, the more expensive it is to sell, can you fight inflation?

From ancient shell strings to modern, star-studded beauty products, human pursuit of beautiful appearance has never changed, and even intensified.

Even in the early days of the Yuan universe, the explosion of virtual human social interaction may have been guided by this need. In fact, the beautification of virtual images has always existed in the development of the Internet. From the early QQ show, to the game more refined pinch face system. The gaming industry has long understood the commercial potential of users in terms of virtual appearance.

The appearance charge is the natural evolution of the market. The appearance charge of the game has a long history. It should be regarded as a branch of prop charge in the subordinate. Early charging props are mostly related to equipment. In addition to the crucial numerical growth, the cool appearance visible to the naked eye gives users an intuitive sense of pleasure from the visual presentation. And such visual effects can also give players a greater sense of superiority and accomplishment from a social level. It can be said that a large part of the satisfaction of players for a game consumption comes from the appearance, and its feedback effect even exceeds the numerical bonus itself.

"Strong or not is just a version, handsome is a lifetime thing." As many players in the forum self-ridicule, good looks may be more important than winning goals and pursuits. If legendary games didn't have exaggerated weapons and light-polluted wings, if DNF's high-powered weapons didn't glow, those kryptonite tycoons wouldn't buy it like they did now. And the pursuit of such games is more obvious on female players.

Sword Net 3 was a typical example. Apart from its excellent appearance, the fashion sold in the game did not affect the player's numerical value. Even though the original price of these fashions is not cheap, female players are still willing to eat them. More exaggerated is that merchants in order to promote the adoption of time-limited sales strategy, so that some appearance items in the passage of time and the player's favorite fermentation, the price has changed dramatically.

For example, the game launched in 2018 can be dyed cape "Qianqiu years old cunning spirit Su Mei," because of its snow-white body, shaped like fox tail, has become a very popular cape among female players. The price also soared from the original price of 688 yuan to an astonishing 120,000 yuan on a third-party platform years after it was out of print.

In addition, given that appearance sales have been associated with value sales for a long time, it is difficult to define which game pioneered the appearance charging model. It is generally accepted that MOORPG, which uses time charges, should be the first type of game to distinguish and promote numerical enhancement and appearance beautification. However, what really carried it forward should be the types of games with strong competitive attributes such as MOBA and shooting.

From the game itself, when the core gameplay needs to ensure balance between players, the items that directly affect the outcome of the competition lose space. The player's needs are more focused on visual pleasure in appearance. Appearance fees have become one of the few and most important ways to generate revenue for these games.

From the perspective of player emotions and preferences, the increasing krypton gold level of medium and heavy games has caused widespread dissatisfaction among the player community. Many MMORPGs had even developed to the point where it was difficult to enjoy the normal game experience without krypton gold. Civilian players with zero krypton and micro krypton were often unable to participate in core gameplay such as dungeons and PK because their combat strength was not up to standard. On the other hand, the form of appearance charge is much higher among players. The author often sees players suggesting to the official to cancel heavy krypton and change it to skin charge like King Glory, which is also very profitable.

As a well-deserved profit brother in domestic mobile game products, King Glory has always been in the top position in the iOS bestseller list in the country for nearly 5 years, and the lowest one has only fallen to the fifth place, and only stayed for 1 day. It has also created an industry record of breaking 2 billion yuan in a single day and breaking 100 million yuan in sales of a single skin. Tencent is not only the most important game product in the mobile era, but also proves to the market the commercialization ability of pure appearance charging mode.

The appearance charge of pink expectation king glory behind the bottleneck mainly includes hero skin, avatar box, etc. external effects, virtual buttons, return to city, kill broadcast and other in-game effects, among which the most important nature is hero skin. Divided by skin quality, there were Warrior, Epic, Legendary, etc. from low to high, and the types and effects of appearance special effects were also upgraded step by step.

If divided according to the skin type is more complex, can be divided into associated series, holiday series, anniversary series, KPL series, 6 yuan series, such as a total of more than 30 series. However, no matter which way it is divided, most skins have one thing in common, that is, limited time sales. If you miss the shelf time of about a week, you can only wait for the return sale at some point in the future. In compressing decision-making time and creating hunger marketing, the king can be said to hold the player's mentality to death.

However, by sorting out the skin online rhythm for nearly five years, the competition has found out some changes that are taking place. Behind the king's super-high flow, there are also his own worries and adjustments. The first change was that the frequency of skin regeneration was increasing. This was a change that almost all players could clearly feel.

From the data, we can also see that, including new skin and return skin, the number of annual shelves of the king is generally increasing. Especially this year, as of October, King has put 91 skins on the shelves, the highest in history, with an average of one skin every 3.5 days.

However, according to the estimated income of Qimai data, since the Spring Festival in 2020, the income level of the king in the past two years has not increased significantly due to the large number of skin online. From another angle, the king's water level has basically reached its peak. Given that it has long been at the head of the industry, this may also be the upper limit of a single domestic game before the total number of domestic game users and single-user payment capacity achieve further breakthroughs.

In the economic downturn, the industry cold environment, accelerate the launch of skin, speed up the pace of realization of the king can only maintain the existing level of water. Considering that behind the increase in the number of skins, the R & D and operating costs will inevitably increase simultaneously, and the profit margin of the king should actually be constantly declining.

In terms of splitting it up, the skin with a price below 88 yuan in the past 5 years has basically remained at more than 20, mainly composed of season skin, anniversary skin, battle order skin, associated skin and 6 yuan skin. The number of skins with a price higher than 88 yuan has soared in the past three years, involving heroes and skin series. In particular, most of the new skins launched this year are priced at 88 yuan and above. Such a strategy should be to hope that more high-priced skin, covering more high-popularity or high-intensity heroes, to attract players to buy, pull up the ARPPU value of each skin.

At the same time, the proportion of these skins belonging to female heroes is also increasing. Of the 91 skin types so far, 29 belong to female heroes, accounting for about 32%. But such choices are not intuitive to please male players. On the contrary, it caters to the consumption needs of female players in the game.

According to the official data of King Glory, the male to female ratio of players in the game is about 1:1.8, and the proportion of female players has exceeded half. And the age distribution of users is quite young, young women aged 20-24 are the user group with the largest proportion of kings. Most of these female users prefer feminine female heroes and handsome male heroes. Releasing the consumption potential of these female players through high-quality skin and activating the "her power" in the game has become the main direction of the current king.

In addition to intuitive economic benefits, skin also carries the responsibility of connecting ordinary players and e-sports ecology.

According to the "2022 China E-sports Industry Research Report" by iResearch Consulting, the proportion of male users has reached 76.4% so far in China. At the same time, youth is also the biggest feature of e-sports users, with 47% of e-sports users under the age of 25 and only 20% of e-sports users over the age of 30.

However, if it is refined into KPL's e-sports ecosystem, the proportion of male users will drop directly to less than half. According to the official report released by King Glory, KPL has far more female viewers than men, and its age distribution is also highly consistent with gamers. Her power is rising in the field of e-sports, and consumer brands with keen senses have long been aware of it. In recent years, brands that choose to carry out marketing activities in the field of e-sports have gradually shown a diversified trend from brands mainly oriented to male consumers such as computer peripherals, mobile phones and automobiles, and daily chemical brands mainly oriented to female consumers such as Estee Lauder, YSL and Lancome have emerged.

Behind these realities, skin plays an irreplaceable role. Every time the KPL finals open, the king will launch a series of supporting activities. Although the specific rules and play methods are different, they basically follow a similar collocation in composition. A series of activities basically includes "champion team five and MVP player's play support + accumulated recharge reward + limited skin return + new FMVP skin on the shelf" these links.

Through high-quality skin, King completed the initial gathering of female users 'attention to eSports events. Later, through the support activities to achieve further aggregation and transformation. Although the support for the contestants does not directly generate income, it is the core link of the whole set of activities. Players need to use specific items to select a player for individual voting, but the voting page displays information including the player team, ID, and HD avatar, but does not mention the player's position. Be sure to put the player's avatar on the limited activity page, but do not want to add a few characters about the position, this kind of design is actually a little careful.

For the old e-sports users who watch the game frequently, the presence or absence of location information has no effect. They can quickly complete judgment and voting based on their past cognition, which is not an activity designed for them. For king players who have never been in contact with or have a shallow understanding of the event, especially female king players, it is easy for them to blindly select players such as junglers or shooters, which is not conducive to converting them into an eSports audience.

However, hiding the location information would make these players feel somewhat at a loss. At this time, with the opening of the game will pop up the event high-energy clips, as well as the sparkling game entrance UI, very clear to give the player a way to solve the puzzle, but also the game into the main line of eSports audience. At the same time, skin will also become a positive target to attract users to continue to watch the game, for example, during last year's World Championship, players will be selected after each game to give new FMVP skin.

In addition, according to Quest Mobile's 2021"Her Economy" Insight Report, women aged 24 and under are mainly interested in stars, beauty, health, etc. With similar user groups, the king chooses to vote for help, high-definition avatars and other similar ways of chasing stars, it seems that there is also a consideration from the direction of young women's interests.

At the same time, this strategy, the king in other points of interest for female players have also tried. For example, during the broadcast of the derivative TV series "You Are My Glory," the king launched the activity of watching the skin of the drama simultaneously. This is obviously a combination of e-sports ecology and women's interest points, also achieved good results, TV series click rate and player activity have been significantly improved.

Conclusion In the case that the environment cannot be changed temporarily, activating the consumption potential of female players and deepening the participation of female players in the game ecosystem are the countermeasures given by the king to the industry. For now, it's working, and women holding up half the sky may become the norm in the future.

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: ID: Coreesports, by Wu Di

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