Introduction
Since the Spring Festival, "Happy Landlord" has been dominating the list of Aladdin mini-games for more than a month. How do other chess and card mini-games break through and occupy the top spot?
During the 2020 Lunar New Year, chess and card games grouped together to hit the domestic App Store free list and Aladdin mini game list. Although the popularity declined with the end of the Spring Festival holiday, chess and card products topped the Aladdin mini game list. Department share still dominates.
Overall, Landlords mini-games are still an evergreen category in chess and card games. "Yu Sanjia", "Happy Landlords", "Tiantian Landlords Live Edition", and "Tuyou Landlords" were all ranked in last week's Aladdin mini-games. Top ten games weekly list. At the same time, "Weile Landlord", which experienced explosive growth during the Spring Festival, also ranked 9th on the Aladdin weekly list.
In addition to the strong performance of the Landlord mini-game, several mahjong mini-games and local chess and card games have also intermittently entered the top ten of the Aladdin mini-game list, and the weekly rankings can also reach the top 30. . For example, "Fingertip Sichuan Mahjong", "Brother Plays Big A", etc.
Chess and card games fit the attributes of the mini-game platform and the local chess and card gameplay can be used as a way to break the game.
An industry insider said in an interview that compared with APP chess and card games, mini-games have obvious advantages. Mini-games do not need to be downloaded and can be played at any time, which can meet the entertainment needs of users in fragmented time. However, the user stickiness of small games is not high, while the advantage of board and card games is that they have high user stickiness, which is very suitable for small games and has a high degree of integration.
In recent years, board and card games have accounted for an increasing share of mini-games. For board and card games, user portraits tend to be older, and the user base during the Spring Festival is huge and cannot be ignored. The social attributes of mini-games can actually make this group more engaged. Good reach products and mini-games based on social media such as WeChat and QQ can better help spread acquaintance marketing.
In the chess and card market, local chess and card games have always been loved by players because they have local gameplay characteristics, are down-to-earth, and are simple to operate. They have a certain market both locally and non-locally. Industry insiders also provided ideas for promoting local chess and card games from three levels: first, the process of local promotion must be indispensable; second, publishing information about local chess and card games in local forums is a top priority; third, expanding Publicity area to let more users know about the chess and card games they operate.
Innovation is the primary way to break the local chess and card games. These top products are worth learning from.
Industry insiders said that card game developers on small game platforms have to face the dominance of "Happy Landlords" normally. This is actually the same phenomenon as in all channels, there is always a head product. But whether there are opportunities depends mainly on the size of the user traffic cake. In fact, the playing methods and modules of the current chess and card games on the market are basically the same, and the homogeneity is serious. The way to break the game still needs innovation.
How to make users feel fresh and how to make differentiation are still issues that the chess and card industry should consider. Diversified development is the future development trend of chess and card games. In addition, methods such as taking chess and card games overseas and chess and card games + e-sports are also directions that can be considered.
Returning to the WeChat mini-game platform, local chess and card products that have hit the headlines today include "Fingertip Sichuan Mahjong", "Weile Hometown Mahjong" and "Brother Plays Big A". Among them, the "Fingertip Sichuan Mahjong" interface provides users with the option to switch locations. Each time the location is changed, the main interface will be updated to "XX Mahjong". Click on it to get eight local and popular mahjong playing methods.
For example, if you choose Sichuan, which has rich mahjong gameplay, there will be "bloody battle" and "blood flow" series of gameplays as well as local gameplays such as "Neijiang Mahjong" and "Bazhong Mahjong". But if you switch to Liaoning, where there are not many mahjong playing methods, the popular playing methods in the north such as "Ka Wu Xing" and "Northern Overthrow Hu" are at the forefront. In this way, the gameplay is divided according to regions, allowing users to experience dozens of mahjong gameplays in one product, which greatly ensures user retention.
"Weile Hometown Mahjong" has made in-depth innovations based on map selection. Players can not only select provinces, but even prefecture-level cities. After selecting the location, in addition to the popular Landlord and Mahjong gameplay, the main interface will also provide a jump to another mini-game "Weile XX Mahjong". For example, if you jump to "Weile Sichuan Mahjong", you will be provided with mahjong gameplay options in 11 prefecture-level cities.
"Brother Plays Big Ace" comes from the traditional chess and card game "Play Big Ace" in Inner Mongolia. Four players can form a team according to the red Ace in hand. The deck is flexible and changeable. The final results are ranked according to the order in which all the cards have been played. . The innovation of the game lies in the fact that the art is different from other chess and card products on the market. The background and characters have been transformed into a "Mongolian steppe". The dubbing of the game also adopts a strong Inner Mongolian accent, and it is paired with a grand prix that can be exchanged for physical rewards. Mechanism ensures user retention.
Use incentive mechanisms to retain users and divert traffic to other local chess and card games
Adding incentives to mini-games is the norm for all mini-game products at present. The dominant game "Happy Landlord" can also obtain props such as Happy Beans and card recorders through sharing, watching advertisements and signing in. Different from this, other chess and card games such as "Tuyou Landlord" and "Fingertip Sichuan Mahjong" have added real phone bills as incentives, using phone bills that can be equivalent to real money as prizes, which is more convenient for many users. Virtual assets are more attractive.
Last year was the stage when many chess and card games launched physical prize incentives. In addition to phone bills and JD.com cards, there were also physical commodities such as gold bars and daily necessities as incentives. Many games also designed "gold bar competitions" and "grand prix" channels. For example, "Fox Landlord", which suddenly emerged in the second half of last year, quickly experienced user fission by setting up a huge bonus pool as an incentive.
The "Grand Prix" requires players to pay a certain amount of game currency as a ticket, and the top players in the final ranking will have the opportunity to compete for physical prizes. However, either because the incentive cost is too high or it is too difficult for players to win awards, most products have eliminated this model in the second half of last year.
According to industry insiders, user experience is the key to the success of any game, especially chess and card games. A rich reward mechanism is one of the effective means to improve user retention and consumption data. In order to obtain incentive redemption vouchers such as "Fortune Cards" and "Fortune Coupons", users will actively watch incentive advertisements. In order to accumulate these vouchers in exchange for prizes, users will insist on going online and playing games, which also has a positive effect on game retention.
Regarding how to retain chess and card game users, industry insiders gave three suggestions. First, clarify the core needs of users; second, have a reasonable UI interface and interaction to make players happy; third, satisfy users' initial psychological satisfaction.
In addition to adding incentive mechanisms, the traffic diversion properties of chess and card games themselves are also worthy of attention. In addition to diverting traffic for some small games that exchange traffic for commercial cooperation, comprehensive chess and card games, such as "Weile Hometown Mahjong", can jump to local chess and card games by changing the region's main interface. Comprehensive products divert traffic to local products, and local products also have channels to return to comprehensive products.
The free house building machine is made into a standard chess and card mini-game. On this basis, an advanced version of the family and friends circle game appears.
As industry insiders mentioned in the interview above, chess and card games themselves have high homogeneity properties, and products with the same gameplay are endless. This also determines that in addition to optimizing the gameplay design of a small chess and card game, it also needs to find other points to attract and retain users. Compared with the 2V2 friends' quick team-up launched in "Happy Landlords", a method that can accommodate more relatives and friends to play chess and card games has become the direction to break the game.
In the past few years, the room card concept appeared in mobile chess and card games. Users could build a room and invite relatives and friends to play together, but they needed to purchase a room card to open a room. The income from the room card was also an important source of income for chess and card game manufacturers at that stage. However, with changes in players’ consumption concepts, including the guidance of some policies, the room card model has gradually been eliminated. At present, chess and card games have basically opened up the mechanism of building houses for free, but the room card charging model is still deeply rooted in users’ memories.
Therefore, on this basis, how the game focuses on promoting free house building for friends and relatives will undoubtedly become a good means to retain users. When you open the Aladdin mini-game list, except for "Happy Landlords", the most conspicuous entrances will be marked with "Build a House for Free" and "Friends and Friends", and provide social platform jumps for quick team formation and input. The room number opening mode has become a standard feature of chess and card games.
In a mahjong-like chess and card game, you can also see the advanced version of "Friends and Friends Circle" for building a house with friends. In the basic house-building mode with friends, users need to click on the sharing page on WeChat or QQ or enter the room number to enter. . After joining a user's circle of friends and family, these operations are no longer needed. When entering the game, you can directly jump to the circle of friends and family to play the game.
In addition, because the Mahjong gameplay is more complex and has local characteristics compared to the Landlords gameplay, different users have different needs in terms of some rules, and the game official cannot satisfy them all. At this time, users can customize the rules according to the circle of friends and family, and customize the gameplay, and up to 20 card tables can be created, which meets the user's requirements for rule diversity. The accommodation space of 20 tables basically meets the coverage of relatives and friends of a single user, which is equivalent to giving users a channel to operate a "chess and card room" for relatives and friends in the game.
Incentive advertising revenue is still the focus of commercialization. In terms of in-app purchases, new membership mechanisms have emerged.
Industry insiders say that there is currently no set industry logic for the commercial design of chess and card games. Generally speaking, incentive advertising revenue is still the top priority. The characteristics of short games and the low threshold for playing chess and cards also determine that most users value the platform that the game provides them with to play chess and cards, rather than paying attention to the superior experience they can get. Incentive ads are usually designed to double settlement rewards, double check-in rewards and free draws. In addition to game currency, some in-game decoration props and match props are also provided as incentives.
In terms of in-app purchases, most of the current top chess and card games use a composite commercial design of incentivized advertising and in-app purchases. In terms of in-app purchases, of course, it is only for the Android version. In-app purchases are provided for game coins such as Happy Beans and Golden Beans needed for the game and diamonds needed to purchase props. The diamonds themselves can also be exchanged for game coins as secondary tokens.
However, compared to the in-app purchase design of mobile chess and card games, the design is lighter. The card table images, avatar frames, bubbles and other decorations that need to be unlocked for a fee can be extracted for free by watching advertisements in the mini-games. The real paid items in mobile games, game characters with specific skills, character costumes and other props have not yet been added to mini games.
In the absence of additional in-app purchases, supplementary purchase of game currency has become the biggest demand. Currently, "Fingertip Sichuan Mahjong" has launched a 7-day SVIP membership subscription service around the purchase of game beans, which is provided by "Brother Fighting Big A" 30 yuan monthly gold privilege monthly card.
"Fingertip Sichuan Mahjong" pays 12 yuan for a weekly card to get 100,000 game beans at one time, and you can get 5,000 game beans every day for the next 7 days. The game bonus is increased by 20%, and the sign-in reward is doubled. Compared with direct purchase, Game beans are more cost-effective, and the additional benefits and privileges are also more attractive. This shows that the small-amount privilege in-app purchase system may be the future in-app purchase direction of chess and card games.
Every "looking" is an encouragement