A year after Chen Rui took over, what happened to the game business of Station B

Visual China.

Text |Eye entertainment.

But a year down,In terms of revenue alone, the revenue of mobile games has become even lower.

The revenue in the first and second quarters of this year was 11300 million yuan and 8900 million yuan, all lower than the same period in 2022. Q3 99.2 billion yuan, a decrease of 33% over the same period.

Isn't station b moving?Obviously not, in the second half of the summer file, Station B obviously made a lot of efforts, and invested a total of 7 games, but each one of them left home like a wanderer, and there was no news after it was launched.

Bilibili used to be well planned, and in the 2022 financial report on the outlook for mobile games, it hopes:

Do a good job with the help of abundant ACG resources**.

With the goal of high-quality products, increase investment and do a good job in self-research.

But the reality is that the best ACG game is "changing skins" when it is tortured by players at station B, and it has even been reversed to summarize the formula of "IP manga + Kaiying production + station B distribution".

The three self-developed games are even quieter. They have been here, but they don't seem to have come, "Slud", "Shaking Light" and "Yiluhir" added up on taptap, and the ** volume only exceeded 500,000.

So, what is wrong?

I have to admit that there are people who love Bilibili games.

Under the taptap review of the game "Slude", some players posted a long comment about the innovation and failure of the game's "playability", and expressed deep doubts, which roughly means:

From the art, it can be seen that the game wants to go for a high-production second game, and the gameplay also has its own ingenuity. But why did everything fall a little bit worse in the end, leading to the whole falling into mediocrity?

There is investment, there are innovative ideas, why do they still fall into mediocrity?The answer is simpleBecause this was a game from three years ago.

Among the three self-developed games, "Ilukhir" and "Slude" were all unveiled at the 2021 game new product launch conference of Station B.

Film and television have a backlog of dramas, and games naturally have a backlog of products.

For the phenomenon that the performance of these games is less than expected, Boss Chen Rui looked very indifferent, and at the meeting, he explained the reason for the phenomenon that the performance of the game was less than expected:Although the quality of these games is good, most of them were projects that were established three years ago, when there was a new user bonus, and now they are not.

In addition to these two games, another self-developed game "Shake the Light: Princess of the Troubled Times", is the first work of the Shake Light Studio under Station B, for the evaluation of the work, more players pointed out: I try to do a good job, but there are many references, and it can be seen that it is more like a new team experiment.

By all indications2023 is not the year of the outbreak of the game business of Station B, but a period of clearance and adjustment.

In May, Bilibili sorted out the product line of the game business in hand and cut part of it;In October, some game development studios in Guangzhou were further dismantled.

At the third quarter meeting, Chen Rui explained this action: it is necessary to cut some projects that do not meet the standards when the project is established in a timely manner, "otherwise it will not be able to meet the market requirements and make money after it is launched. ”

This product clearance behavior means the end of the "game self-development wave" launched by Station B in 2021——Previously, Bilibili invested in nearly 20 game companies, expanded the scale of its self-research team to 1,000 people, and announced a total of 16 new game projects.

Since the old products and standards are outdated, where are the new standards?

A year after taking over the game business, Chen Rui gave the answer in the face of the new market environment in November:

First, it must be a long-term operation;

Second, it can only be a vertical head;

Third, the cost is within a reasonable range;

Chen Rui shared his views on the current game market at the Q3 earnings conference, and some insights are very keen.

First of all, he observed that the game market is still very large, and more and more people love to play games, and they are more and more interested in playing.

Because of these users of the **game** on station B, there are more and more people, and the time is getting longer and longer, and they are more and more fond of participating in discussions.

But why are there so many games that no one wants to play?

The answer is, too similar. "It's not that the user doesn't want to play new games, it's just that there's no need for him to play homogeneous games. ”

Chen Rui gave an example of his observation, the direction of many games this year is art, one game art has achieved 80 points, and another game art has to achieve 87 points, this kind of detailed involution will not make users feel "I'm going to play this game", because they already have similar games in their hands.

He believes that the big failure of self-developed games in 2021 mainly stems from missing the opportunity, after missing the era of user dividends"Good quality games" will not be able to make money in the market.

According to this standard, all the games launched by station B in the second half of this year can meet the criteria for making money before.

But the new standard is that the winner takes all. For example, in 2023, between June and July alone, nearly 30 two-dimensional games will be launched, and most of the game investment can be called "heavyweight" compared to the past, but in the end, there is only one pair of big and small kings who can really make money this year, namely "Honkai: Star Dome Railway" and "Back to the Future 1999".

Therefore, the failure of station B is also reasonable.

If there is a thing that the former station B loves to ignore, and the current station B can't climb high, it must be a game. Bilibili was once regarded as the most suitable company in China to develop and operate two-dimensional games.

In September 2016, the national server of "Fate Grand Order", which was exclusive to station B, was launched, and it quickly became a two-dimensional blockbuster.

After the success of "Fate Grand Order", Station B won the first right to the domestic two-dimensional game "Blue Route" the following year.

These two masterpieces directly carried Station B to the ranks of the most profitable two-dimensional game companiesIn 2017, the game business revenue of Bilibili increased by more than 500% year-on-year, and the game business accounted for 83% of the total revenue of Bilibili. It is equivalent to the entire B station, which is basically raised by these two games.

But perhaps success came too easily, Bilibili did not want to continue to consolidate its achievements in the two-dimensional game, but based on the needs of listing, it opened the road of "de-gamification", trying to get rid of the structure of relying too much on a single business and create a diversified revenue structure.

During this period, "Genshin Impact" was released, and miHoYo successfully came out of the position, replacing Bilibili's position in the two-dimensional game.

But in a sense,Station B's goal of "reducing the proportion of game revenue to 50" that year was indeed achieved。At present, the game accounts for less than a quarter of the revenue of station B, and if there is no new work to reverse, there is a possibility of further reduction.

In 2021, Bilibili tried to turn the tide, and while investing heavily in game companies to try to capture the next miHoYo, it also started its own self-research path.

But sadly, the best time has been missed. As Chen Rui observed before, the direction of all two-dimensional game involutions in 2023 is art. Although art cannot be a breakthrough to open up differentiation, it is enough to become the standard line for participating in competition.

The head second game continues to raise the market standard, and a qualified game is increasing in terms of capital investment and R&D cycle, which means that the opportunity for station B to participate in betting continues to decrease.

But there is not much time left for station B. At present, in the 2023 interim financial report, when it comes to mobile games, the biggest contributors are still "Fate Grand Order" and "Blue Route".

Fate Grand Order was released in 2016. It's been 8 years, and even the Heroic Spirit can't bear it anymore.

In terms of what new games will look like in the future, Chen Rui believes that if you want to continue to make money, you must either do your best, or you must be very different from others.

In fact, although Station B has not been able to do its best for the time being, it has indeed made some different attempts based on its own ACG ecology. We can understand it as an opportunity for station B.

What are the advantages of ACG at Station B?

Take the recent mobile game "King of Nasalik" produced by Kaiying and developed by Station B as an example. The first three seasons of the original work of this mobile game "Overlord" were broadcast exclusively on station b, and there were 4500 million**, 10 million followers.

Based on this, the official account of the mobile game released a total of 10 issues** on station B, and the number of fans increased by 1.28 million. The first PV in March won a total of 2.35 million**, accurately capturing the core user group of the IP.

This ACG ecological advantage is not limited to IP adaptations. In fact,Station B seems to have the idea of advancing the game and anime synchronously to achieve the effect of "playing games and chasing fans".

At the beginning of the launch of "Slude" in August this year, comics and animations based on the game's original IP were also launched simultaneously, and this abnormal behavior attracted the attention of practitioners. In the past, the content development of most games was carried out after the game exploded for a period of time, in order to extend the value of the IP and use the game culture to precipitate players.

Station B's move is quite one"I'm the best at making games inside, manga and anime".and"I'm the best at making manga and anime inside."The posture of rogue tactics. But judging from the results, "Slud" did not make a breakthrough because of this. In addition, Eye Entertainment found that Station B has repeatedly emphasized its ACG ecological advantages in its financial reports, and will create game works that will satisfy ACG users. This move is also full of worries - will Station B fall into the same predicament as bytes?

When there is an audience or channel advantage, game development is affected, and the development tends to be conservative.

The answer to this question will depend on whether Bilibili defines its own advantages as the number of ACG users or their understanding of ACG users.