Speaking of game clients, the first thing that domestic gamers think of may be Tencent’s TGP platform. Tencent's TGP game platform was established in 2012. At that time, "League of Legends" was gradually spreading in the domestic game field. With the feedback of "League of Legends" to the TGP platform, it was able to rank among the top domestic and even international game platforms. .
On September 1, 2017, Tencent TGP platform was officially renamed. The development and growth of Tencent Game Platform over the years has allowed many Internet giants to see the vast market in the game platform field.
Multiplayer LOL box is declining, TGP becomes the new overlord
While the game "League of Legends" has brought hot market traffic to the TGP platform, it has also brought immeasurable opportunities to many game assistants. Old players of "League of Legends" all know that during the S3 season, there was an extremely popular "League of Legends" game assistant, and that was the multiplayer LOL box.
Duowan LOL Box is a game assistant developed by Duowan Games in the field of "League of Legends". Its main functions include in-game skill and wild monster timing, record and combat power inquiry, game outfit recommendations, and free skin experience privileges. In the combat power query function, the player's game data is analyzed and integrated to obtain the corresponding combat power, allowing players to understand the gap in combat power between the enemy and ourselves during the game, and gain a better view of the game to deal with or target the enemy's output points and Weak points; it also has equipment recommendations to meet the needs of some players who do not understand the game equipment; and unlimited sight range allows players to have a fixed field of view in the game, unable to observe team battles on the map and unable to provide timely support, which delays the fighter's flight. question.
For most players, when they open League of Legends to experience the game through the Multiplayer LOL Box, the most impressive thing is that the Multiplayer LOL Box can provide players with the privilege of experiencing all the skins of heroes for an annual fee. This is undoubtedly a great thing for most players who want to buy a certain hero skin but are short of money or unable to buy it in the game mall. With this feature, the number of gamers who play LOL boxes has increased significantly.
At that time, the Duowan LOL box was spread by word of mouth among players, and its market size was unprecedentedly large. However, after 2012, with the entry of Tencent gaming platform TGP Game Assistant, the market position of Duowan LOL Box Assistant gradually declined.
TGP has a function similar to QQ’s ability to remember account and password, which saves players the trouble of re-entering their account and password every time they log in, and brings a convenient gaming experience to players; at the same time, the game acceleration function can also bring players To achieve a stable gaming network environment; in addition, TGP serves as a game launch port. In addition to supporting a variety of Tencent games, launching games through TGP can also gain additional platform level experience and redeem corresponding game equipment. The many conveniences of TGP have gradually dimmed the halo of Duowan LOL Box, the former king of game assistants.
Tencent, on the other hand, was pursuing its victory. After gaining traffic from gamers, it began to deal a devastating blow to third-party game assistants, that is, banning the accounts of players who continued to use third-party game assistants. Back then, "League of Legends" had long occupied the top spot on the popularity list of Internet cafe games, and its popularity is self-evident. After Tencent introduced many players who used third-party game assistants to TGP, Tencent's game platform gained momentum and its dominant position in the domestic game platform market was gradually established.
After killing many players, the TGP battlefield begins
Tencent's TGP game platform has gradually grown and developed with the support of "League of Legends". After successfully squeezing out the fiercely competitive Duowan LOL box, it has few rivals in the game assistant market. With the continuous development and growth of the domestic game market, our country has become the largest game market in the world. Data from the "2017 China Game Industry Report" show that the actual sales revenue of my country's game market reached 203.61 billion yuan in 2017, a year-on-year increase of 23.0%, continuing to rank first in the world.
With such a huge gaming market, both traditional giants in the gaming field and new gaming giants from other fields are eyeing the huge cake of gaming platforms. Gaming giants at home and abroad, except Tencent, are also constantly exploring the market. Therefore, for TGP, which has risen with the power of "League of Legends", its journey in the gaming field has officially begun after killing the Duowan LOL box. TGP will also face a competitive landscape of internal and external troubles on the gaming platform.
On the one hand, it is the impact of foreign game platforms on the domestic market. As my country's share of the global game market gradually increases and it is clearly in a leading position, foreign game giants have also accelerated their deployment in the domestic game market. For players, foreign game platforms such as Blizzard Games, Steam, etc. can provide domestic game players with quick access to high-quality foreign games. The recently popular chicken-eating game "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" is made by Steam, and the number of people online at the same time has reached 3 million. After the chicken-eating game was agented by Tencent, "Humanity Failed" launched by steam has become a popular choice for domestic players. New favorite.
Previously, Blizzard's "Overwatch" also had the potential to catch up with "League of Legends" when it first entered the domestic game market. At the same time, the "Warcraft" series has also become a classic in the gaming field; in addition, on Christmas Eve, We have launched discount promotions for classic games such as "Star Wars: Battlefront 2", "Battlefield 1", and "" to meet the game needs of domestic game players… Foreign game platforms have met the needs of domestic players by continuously outputting high-quality game products, and Players' praise of the platforms has become a powerful driving force for the expansion of these platforms in the domestic game platform market.
On the other hand is the competition between new and old domestic game companies. In addition to the impact of the entry of foreign game platforms on Tencent's game platform, NetEase Games has become Tencent's long-term enemy in the game field by virtue of its market advantages established over many years of deep cultivation in the game field. Released data shows that while Tencent’s “Honor of Kings” topped the “2017 Global IOS Mobile Game Revenue Ranking” with revenue of about 30 billion yuan, NetEase’s “Fantasy Westward Journey Mobile”, “Onmyoji” and “A Chinese Ghost Story” "Mobile Games" have also entered the top ten, among which "Fantasy Westward Journey Mobile Game" ranked third.
In addition, as Alibaba brings 1 billion yuan of funds to help the development of Alibaba's game industry, and as Alibaba's industries Alibaba Literature, Alibaba Pictures, and Youku Tudou jointly create the "IP Fission Plan", Alibaba enters the game field. The determination has been made clear. Externally, Alibaba Games has used its commercial marketing advantages to cooperate with international game publishers such as Mail.Ru, Efun, and Longteng Middle East; domestically, it also has brands such as Jiuyou, which have cooperated with "Fantasy Westward Journey" after being cultivated in the market. ", "Dragon", "Miracle for All" and other game manufacturers have cooperated, and gained a good market share in the process of cooperation.
To sum up, after TGP successfully established itself in the field of game assistants with "League of Legends", coupled with its precipitation and development in recent years, it has become a game platform that can compete with Blizzard, Steam, etc. However, with the impact of foreign platforms on the domestic game market, coupled with the existence of new domestic enemies Alibaba and old enemy NetEase, the competitive landscape of domestic game platforms has changed from the previous battle between NetEase and Tencent to a competition between the top players. At this time, the pattern of internal and external troubles is the real challenge after the name change.
In the multi-party competition situation, independent product parties are the way to win
In the current game field, although the competition between Tencent Game Platform and other game platforms has taken shape, compared with other games, Tencent Platform has the advantage of free game resources and is a powerful eye-catcher that attracts many game players. point. With social tools such as QQ as the account port of the game platform, plus the upstream players with high stickiness, and the commodity trading mall on the game platform, Tencent has formed a relatively complete game ecosystem in the game field. If the platform wants to remain invincible in the future gaming field, it still needs to strengthen the diversified services on the port platform and solve the problem of game product output.
First, on the game client, although Tencent Game Platform has many of its games as traffic diversion tools, compared with more mature game platforms such as Steam, the nature of the game community is not yet clear at this stage, and in game malls and personal There is obviously a shadow of steam on the home page. And after the previous release of "Don't Starve" touched the bottom line of the domestic game market, it also exposed the platform's dilemma in developing foreign game markets.
In addition, most of the game live broadcasts and video categories are based on popular games. On the current interface, the most prominent games are "League of Legends" and "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", and the platform caters to the needs of most gamers for game strategies. demand, spending most of the page on these two games. This greatly limits players' exposure to other games, and can easily lead to players lacking knowledge of a certain game and missing out on high-quality games.
Secondly, in terms of product output, the game products independently developed by Tencent Game Platform do not have advantages. Although the outstanding performance of "Honor of Kings" in the past two years has created Tencent's myth of "earning 100 million yuan a day", the game manufacturer of its game design model "League of Legends" is an American fist company; The market influence brought by the chicken game "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" was only started after the game received good market response on Steam. It was obviously behind Steam in terms of seizing the market opportunity.
Foreign game manufacturers have accumulated users in the domestic market. When foreign game developers occupy a certain position in the domestic market, Tencent will inevitably spend more money to purchase copyrights if it wants to seize the game market share by representing their games. The result may be that the platform raises the price of game products, players' rights and interests in the game product trading market are damaged, and the number of fleeing users continues to increase, ultimately causing the platform to lose its competitiveness.
Therefore, if Tencent wants to gain a foothold in the increasingly diversified game market in the future, it needs to continuously strengthen the development and construction of its game IP, provide more diverse game players with diversified game products, and bring a better game experience.
All in all, whether it was the previous defeat of the multi-player LOL box in order to compete for the players of "League of Legends", or the rise of giants in the domestic game market, in the final analysis, they are all trying to seize the trillion-dollar game market. In such a market, as players' demands for games continue to change, players' enthusiasm for games in the game market has gradually shrunk. Only by solving players' game experience problems and providing players with more game ports can we Accelerating the development of game products is the right way for game platforms to last long in the market.