Reporter Li Zhe reports from Beijing.
It's not that advertising can't afford it, but IP marketing is more cost-effective. "At present, the cross-border linkage of game IP has become a trend.
The reporter of China Business News noticed that due to the high degree of overlap in the portraits of user groups, a number of game IPs have frequently cooperated with milk tea and trendy brands recently.
Sun Shoushan, chairman of the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, said that in the past few years, the market scale of the IP industry has continued to expand, and the IP industry has become a cultural industry with vitality and potential. "We must fully realize the cross-border integration potential of game IP, break through the boundaries of the game industry, and innovate and integrate with digital content fields such as literature, film and television, and animation, so as to achieve resource sharing, complementary advantages, and coordinated development. ”
Cross-border linkage is rising
The trend of cross-border co-branding has swept the game industry.
Previously, "Genshin Impact" and Heytea had two joint collaborations. In a recent collaboration, in Heytea and "Genshin Impact" "Happy Encounter Genshin Impact 2."On the day of the joint launch of 0", 5 related topics such as Genshin Impact Hey Tea is delicious and Heytea Genshin Impact Linkage have appeared on Weibo hot searches one after another. "At that time, I went to line up early in the morning, just to be able to get the surrounding area of Ganyu. A Genshin Impact player said.
On November 15, the milk tea brand 1 Diandian officially announced the co-branding of "Peace Elite" created by Tencent Games. Previously, the "Book of Undetermined Events" in cooperation with Cha Baidao also had a high popularity.
And the cross-border co-branding of game IP is not only in the field of FMCG. Recently, the Genshin Impact-themed livery aircraft jointly launched by miHoYo and Juneyao Airlines took off for the first time at Shanghai Pudong Airport.
In terms of IP crossover, game companies are playing more new tricks. Sun Shoushan said that in the past few years, the market scale of the IP industry has continued to expand, and the current IP industry has become a cultural industry with vitality and potential.
According to the data, the scale of China's entertainment IP market will exceed 460 billion yuan in 2022, mainly covering games, film and television, toys, animation and other fields. Among them, the performance of the game field is particularly prominent. In 2022, China's game IP revenue accounted for 37% of the total revenue of China's entertainment IP market2%, a number of top game IPs have provided content output for other digital industries, becoming the core link for the coordinated development of multiple fields.
At the same time, some game companies are still conservative in the application of IP. A person from a game company told reporters: "The company's current main direction of research and development around IP is still game products. There are relatively few offline content such as playgrounds, dolls, blind boxes, and interactive content. ”
In the view of Zhang Shule, the first person in the game industry, domestic mobile game IP derivatives have not formed a market scale, but are like PC game derivatives, similar to the existence of a kind of manufacturer giveaway, and lack a sense of existence between gamers and ACG fans.
Open up more space for imagination
Behind the cross-border IP co-branding, the domestic game market has entered a stage of slow growth. At present, the user growth rate of China's game industry has been less than 1% for many years, and market competition is intensifying.
In addition, the marketing expenses of game manufacturers remain high. According to the "2023 China Mobile Game Advertising and Marketing Report", the median sales expense ratio of statistical enterprises in the whole year of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023 is 1891% and 1774%, both for the whole of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, both figures are new highs in recent years. However, the increase in marketing expenses does not mean that it can be fully converted into revenue for game companies.
Ao Ran, executive vice president and secretary general of the China Audio and Digital Association, said that although the sales expense rate is rising, the marketing methods and thinking models of many enterprises have not been upgraded simultaneously, and the phenomenon of highly dependent on bidding advertising and backward iteration of marketing tools is still relatively common in the industry, and to a large extent, it has led to a decline in marketing effect, such as in terms of net profit, the proportion of game business losses of monitoring companies in 2022 has risen to 355%, there are also many companies that maintain profitability and have experienced a decline in profitability, and in 2023, although the profitability situation has improved, the loss-making enterprises are still more than two percent. Overall, China's game industry has seen a phenomenon of "marketing efforts continue to rise, but revenue and net profit both decline".
Although the overall sales expense ratio of game companies is still improving, it is also showing a trend of "weak purchases". In this context, the cross-border linkage of game IP has opened up more imagination space for game marketing. For example, the co-branding of Heytea and "Genshin Impact" provides Heytea fans with an opportunity to get close to "Genshin Impact". "I learned about this game through the joint name of Heytea, and the painting style attracted me more. A Heytea buyer said.
Under the general trend of precision marketing, the age group of gamers has a high overlap with the age group of milk tea drinks, which gives game products a natural penetration. According to the "2023 Mobile Game Industry IP Development Report", the cross-domain content creativity of IP will promote the further integration and development of the digital culture industry. At the industry level, the cooperation between the digital culture industry such as animation, film and television and the game industry will be further deepened, and cross-domain integration will bring new opportunities for content innovation and marketing for the development of game IPAt the content level, multi-domain content complements and develops in a coordinated manner, providing users with multi-category and multi-dimensional IP content, while promoting user conversion between various cultural fields.
Bring a drainage effect
According to gamma data, the number of core users of mobile game IP at this stage exceeds 1900 million, the scale of pan-users exceeds 2300 million, but the number of potential users is down from previous years. In the stock market, how to give full play to and improve the influence of IP to cope with the increasingly fierce competition has become a common problem that game manufacturers are concerned about.
Sun Shoushan said that while the IP industry is developing rapidly, it is also necessary to be soberly aware of the shortcomings that still exist in its development process: such as the original IP incubation capacity needs to be improved, and the commercialization model is still weak, which requires the majority of practitioners to further concentrate and work hard to form the overall advantages of upstream strategic layout, midstream innovation, and downstream multi-dimensional coverage, build a high-quality IP ecology and high-quality IP path, and promote the standardized, healthy and sustainable development of the game IP industry.
The original IPs of domestic game companies, except for the IPs of individual popular games, are mostly 'paper people', with thin personalities, mainly relying on character images to form a difference. At the same time, IP derivatives are made of dolls and dolls, or blindly follow the gameplay of trendy blind boxes and cards, lacking the creative design and secondary creation of derivatives, and also lacking more new elements, just reduced to an ornament. Zhang Shule said.
The reporter learned from the interview that the current domestic game companies are still focusing on the main game business, and their diversified development ideas still need to be further opened.
For the recently popular "short drama + game" track, many game companies, including Perfect World and Kaiying Network, have entered the game. Industry insiders believe that one of the reasons why game companies enter the short drama is that the IP of film and television dramas brings a natural drainage effect.
Industry insiders said that relying on mature film and television works, you can directly interact with games, which can greatly reduce the cost of game development, and at the same time, fans of film and television dramas will also become the natural traffic of games.
In fact, the crossover of game IP is the same. Sun Shoushan said that it is necessary to fully realize the cross-border integration potential of game IP, break through the boundaries of the game industry, and innovate and integrate with digital content fields such as literature, film and television, and animation, so as to achieve resource sharing, complementary advantages, and coordinated development. Give full play to the value of game IP in content expansion and media dissemination, break through the limitations of application scenarios, deepen cooperation with the real economy, promote the exploration of "IP+", and create a multi-level, all-round and sustainable ecosystem. On the basis of user needs and ensuring the quality of IP content, we can explore new models of business integration, gain insight into new opportunities for market growth, and achieve new development of industrial value-added.