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

Look at the present and show the future.

Less than two years after its establishment, it has completed four rounds of financing of tens of millions of dollars. This is the target of the UGC creation platform, which is developing rapidly.

November 15 news, metacosmos UGC platform YAHAHA announced the completion of US $4000 A + round financing, jointly led by Temasek and Alibaba, Sanqi Entertainment and Investment, Taihe Capital as the exclusive financial adviser. According to industry insiders, YAHAHA will be valued at $300 million after this round of financing.

In recent years, thanks to the rise of the concept of Metaverse, UGC platforms that are relatively closer to this vision have sprung up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. It claims that it wants to create a Roblox with eight elements of Metaverse, and it is successfully listed as the first share of Metaverse. All these intuitive factors more or less stimulate the gradual Metaverse of the UGC platform, and form an upsurge.

It is worth mentioning that, compared with the YAHAHA, which will be held every month soon, some other domestic entrepreneurs in the same period have left the stage gloomily. Two months ago, the code universe "restart the world", invested by byte jump, was officially shut down.

I thought this product would become a window for byte jumping into the game of meta-universe, or even become the Chinese version of "Roblox", but I never thought that this drive would come and go quickly.

With a two-year valuation of US $300 million, YAHAHA was founded in December 2020. The founding team is made up of senior Unity staff, with core members from well-known games and technology companies such as Microsoft, EA and BAT.

The founder and CEO Chris of the company graduated from Shanghai Jiaotong University majoring in computer science and obtained a master's degree in computer science from Fudan University. He has served in Microsoft, EA, Unity and other enterprises.

It is clearly stated in the company's official introduction that the ideal of YAHAHA is to create the next generation of digital entertainment platform by achieving equal rights in the creation of 3D interactive content. To put it simply, it allows creators to create their own games, worlds and social spaces through simple drag-and-drop through uncoded 3D creation tools.

According to YAHAHA, in April this year, the company tested the Alpha version of the product, covering Windows, Mac, Google, iOS mainstream PC and mobile, and users can interact with the server across the end. As of October, more than 100000 users have registered and experienced on the platform.

As the concepts such as Metaverse and Web3.0 enter the exploration stage, the potential of the UGC platform in the low-threshold content creation side is becoming more and more prominent; on the other hand, YAHAHA has completed the product version 3.39 update and launched the platform virtual currency Yos test.

The two core messages of "future trend" and "achievable" are obviously released, and the determination of capital to enter the bureau is further strengthened.

According to the heavenly eye survey data, YAHAHA completed angel round financing in January 2021, and completed Pre-A round and A round financing in March and June of the same year. And this A + round of financing of US $40 million, Temasek, Alibaba, Sanqi Mutual Entertainment Venture Capital Fund are all new investors.

So far, YAHAHA has introduced 10 investment institutions, including Wuyuan Capital, Xiaomi Group, ZhenFund, Hillhouse Venture Capital, BAI Capital, Coatue Management, bilibili, Temasek, Alibaba and Sanqi Mutual Entertainment Venture Capital Fund, with a financing amount of nearly 100 million US dollars.

It is understood that after this round of financing, the YAHAHA valuation of the company, which is less than two years old, has also reached 300 million US dollars. It can be said that such a target is not developing rapidly.

At present, YAHAHA has set up dual headquarters in Shanghai and Helsinki, Finland, with a team size of about 200 people, as well as offices in Shanghai, Finland and Seoul. After this round of financing, the company will also set up offices and recruit localization teams in North America and the Asia-Pacific region.

In addition, YAHAHA will also announce new strategic partnerships with industry partners and studios in the near future, with core players of 3D content assets including Unity, Synty Studios, CGTrader and Dabeeo.

On the future, Chris said: "YAHAHA's vision is not limited to leading the next generation of content entertainment, the greater significance is that we can use the IVWP (Integrated Virtual World Platform) platform and tools to help the next generation of creators create quality content that belongs to them."

At the same time, he also believes that there are plenty of opportunities waiting for us in the future virtual world, and the company will continue to invest in building a better team community ecology and stay ahead of the next generation of entertainment.

The byte beats and Lilith is in the game. Yuanyu can't do without games, just like the West can't do without Jerusalem.

First of all, let's share an interesting number. According to the Sensor Tower report, there has been an average of one new meta-universe App every day since the concept of meta-universe broke out. From November 2021 to January 2022, about 552 App around the world have added the word meta-universe to their descriptions.

In terms of form, there are no more than three routes for those products that call themselves meta-cosmic games.

Choose a virtual human or virtual image as an anchor, combined with traditional games, such as MMORPG "Illuvium", which plays the explorer's combat exploration on an alien planet. Or use virtual currency as an anchor to implement play to earn's GameFi games, such as "Axie Infinity", which was once popular in Southeast Asia.

And the "Roblox" and "my world" that provide UGC capabilities and space with editing tools as anchor points.

Among them, the third type is the most preferred by the market, and it is also recognized as the type with the greatest growth potential. Among the outstanding ones, in addition to the above-mentioned YAHAHA, Lilith's "Boom Party", and the code universe that has won byte investment, "restart the world".

When it comes to "Boom Party", we have to lead to "Leonardo da Vinci", the UGC creation platform of Lilith's internal standard Roblox. At present, Leonardo da Vinci has two soft books, Lilith da Vinci Planning Game Editing Software and Lilith da Vinci Planning Game Software.

The former is a necessary game editing tool for players to create UGC for this type of game, while the latter is a sharing community for producing works. Together with activities such as game creation competitions, they provide help and support for developers and build a developer community ecology. And "Boom Party" is the product of this system, which has been put on the shelves of Goole Play at present.

As we can see from the store page, "Boom Party" is a product that integrates a large number of party games and values the social experience. The game is still to participate in various parties Mini Game as the main method of play, through the editor to allow players to create new ways of play for continuous filling iteration of the content.

In addition, in terms of type, "Boom Party" is more likely to be the same product as "Life Party", which won the version number in April, which means that the game may be able to meet domestic players soon.

Unlike "Boom Party", which also has a large factory background, also provides game editing tools, and even takes the UGC process as the main way to play, "restart the world" is a thing of the past.

The game, led by industry OG Xing Shanhu and known for its self-developed 3D physical editor, allows ordinary players to create in WYSIWYG editing mode, using everyday thinking in line with the real physical world.

Through the editor, players can use nine basic modules, such as squares, balls and cylinders, to achieve deformation and splicing, and build different styles of scenes, characters, objects and other materials like assembling Lego models. Moreover, these materials can obtain the same physical properties as the real world, making it convenient for players to form a game world with the logical experience and mode of thinking perceived in daily life.

For example, for example, players want to design that when a character touches a sphere, the sphere can bounce off this effect, without the complex calculation of the motion path of the sphere, and only need to create components to realize the idea.

If Douyin lowers the threshold of UGC in the video field, it makes it easy for the general public to shoot and produce videos. That "restart the world" editor may also be intended in the game field, to flatten the skill wall in front of many players, so that more people with no programming foundation can participate in the creation of the game.

Failed, looking for a path to rebirth, interestingly, "restart the World" did attract byte attention, announcing an investment in R & D team code in April last year. Byte takes a fancy to the latter's technical capabilities and blockbuster products, while the code universe requires byte funding and user support.

However, the fairy tale-like two-way trip did not lead to a happy ending.

On August 27, 2021, "restart the World" launched App Store, which was recommended by Apple and entered the 20th place on the download list. It is reported that the DAU of the project has exceeded 150000 three days after it was launched.

It can be said that the initial stage of product launch to achieve such a performance, can greatly increase the confidence of the team off to a good start. But it is a pity that "restart the World" finally ended in a shutdown on September 20 this year.

Behind this, there are not only the external influence of type development and policy change, but also the internal factors of strategic transfer.

The number of suspensions of "restart the World" is directly related to the notice on further strict Management: effectively preventing minors from indulging in online games, which was issued on August 30, 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter. He said that the introduction of anti-addiction policy made it impossible for Code Qiankun to continue to operate on the existing path.

In a nutshell, the concept of this UGC product can be regarded as Douyin of the gaming industry. It needs a large number of users to create massive content to support the circular operation of the platform ecology. The pulling knife of the regulatory policy will obviously make the platform lose its core user base. This factor also further affects the financial level of the team.

At the same time, the industry has fallen into vigilance and pessimism because of the unclear regulatory attitude. With the accelerated withdrawal of external capital, the major manufacturers continue to maintain the operational strategy of reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Of course, the bytes in the industry are not different, and the investment in the traditional game CP has basically stopped. For its substandard performance of the products and teams, but also more decisively choose to cut off the tail and integration.

If the policy environment is the direct factor leading to byte "abandoning" the code and "restarting the world", then the competitiveness of the product itself may be another objective influence.

In fact, we can see that whether it is YAHAHA or Lilith da Vinci's "Boom Party", the first markets are overseas. On the one hand, it takes into account the policy environment, on the other hand, it is the pressure given by the same type of competitive products in the domestic market.

Take Mini World, for example, the peak number of monthly active users of the game exceeds 100 million, the number of works created by players exceeds 200 million, and the number of certified developers exceeds 1 million. Such a huge first-mover advantage, as well as the high conversion costs of this type, make it impossible for "restart the world" to compete for a piece of soil for its own growth.

And unlike other types, the construction of UGC ecology is often accompanied by a long cold start period, and most products fall at this stage from 0 to 1. Therefore, for games committed to UGC, a mature game is often needed as a means to attract and retain users at the initial stage.

Even the leading "Roblox" in the industry, its predecessor is also as an educational software to complete the initial user acquisition and economic inflow. And from its birth to the explosion in 2019, it has experienced 15 years of accumulation. Such a long training cycle is clearly beyond the affordability of start-ups and does not match the cycle that capital wants to pay off.

For bytes at that time, the priority of "restart the world" based on the PC side has been reduced in terms of synergy and relevance. At the same time, in the face of the downward economic environment and a steady stream of R & D investment, Rao's deep-pocketed bytes have to be calculated carefully, and the previously promised investment has not been landed for a long time.

In fact, after spending a lot of money on PICO, the strategic focus of bytes in the meta-universe has shifted to the ecological construction around the head-to-head hardware. On the one hand, byte actively introduces high-quality game content, "Super Legion", "Townscaper" and other word-of-mouth works have been launched one after another, and the VR version of "Chinese Paladin" under the flag of Zhongshou has recently been announced to log on to PICO.

On the other hand, widely cooperate with industry partners, hold XR content development competition and other activities, and launch PICO developer program to provide developers with financial and resource support, and strive to build their own content ecology. So far, the number of online games on the PICO platform has reached about 300.

Based on this, we can boldly speculate that the meta-universe games after bytes are more likely to span multiple terminals rather than being limited to one platform. At the same time, the type of play will be more mild, closer to the existing Douyin user ecology. Even in the overall meta-cosmic strategy, the role of games is more likely to be an assistant with social and short video products than a lead attacker.

From the crazy marketing launch of PICO for more than a year, we can obviously feel the urgency of bytes, which means to catalyze the growth of meta-universe industry on our own. As the domestic meta-universe frenzy gradually cools down, it is clear that such a strategy and investment cannot be maintained for a long time. But what we can be sure of is that bytes will still be the number one promoter in the domestic meta-universe field.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:Coreesports, author: draft trio

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