How popular is the game surroundings?The ring sold for 5 million, and the set of sold over 20 million

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GameLook reports/Perhaps few people can predict that those two-dimensional game companies entrenched in Shanghai will rise rapidly in recent years. At that time, the outside world generally believed that this was just a coincidence created by a small group of people, but as these companies continue to conquer the surrounding market, the coincidence theory has no longer tenable.

At the beginning of June this year, when most players were not paying attention, Mihayou launched a character figure on the official channel-“Condensing the Light · Covering the Moon and Heavenly Power” in a low-key manner. There was not much publicity, only The price is as high as 1,299 yuan.

From the price point of view, this expensive figure is hard to say that it is close to the people, but in the official flagship store of “Yuan Shen” Tmall, the figure has obtained more than 6000 player reservations in just three days. As of now, the total number of reservations for goods has reached 10,000+, and the total sales volume can conservatively reach 13 million. On reddit, the figure also attracted the attention of foreign players.

In fact, not only Mihayou, but also Shanghai Two-dimensional game companies such as Folding Paper and Yingjiao, are also very popular in the game peripheral industry.

On June 30th, Fold Paper Xinyi flagship store opened the pre-sale of “Love and the Producer” “Li Zeyan Birthday Theme Ring”. Compared with the condensed hands, the price of Li Zeyan’s ring is much “relatively close to the people”, at only 286 yuan. According to statistics, 17,000 copies of this product were sold in less than ten days, and the single product set alone brought 5 million yuan in sales to the stack of paper.

In the same time period, Eagle Horn also launched the first official setting book for “Tomorrow’s Ark” in two years. This setting book with a unit price of 259 yuan has set a volume of 100,000 orders within one hour of sales. Jiao brought more than 25.9 million sales, and is expected to continue to create higher sales in the future.

The advancement of Shanghai’s two-dimensional manufacturers in the peripheral areas is only the tip of the iceberg of China’s gaming peripheral industries.

Why has the two-dimensional game become the next outlet in the surrounding market?

In China, although with the popularity and sinking of the Internet, Internet video platforms have become the main dissemination channels for non-young fan dramas, but compared to the “watching” dimension, it combines visual, auditory, and tactile games. , Obviously can cultivate the player’s feelings for the role, which is the biggest magic weapon upheld by the game company.

The question is, can all game companies be able to do peripherals? There is no doubt that the answer is no.

The concept of surroundings comes from the second dimension, and the main body of his creation also comes from the second dimension. For the surrounding market, the two-dimensional audience is almost equal to the audience in the entire surrounding market. But not all players are two-dimensional. On certain subdivisions, some players are even opponents of the two-dimensional culture.

But in any case, it is an established fact that the second dimension is not a minority. From the niche people in the past to the beginning of the development, the key to the expansion of the cultural roots of the “two-dimensional” is to take high-quality IP as the core and integrate into mainstream media through multi-channel derivative methods such as animation, games, peripherals, and movies to build a The “two-dimensional” cultural consumption pattern of mass influence.

In this process, based on the advantages of games in multi-dimensional experience, game companies that have a deep understanding of the “two-dimensional” generation and have professional teams and content operation execution capabilities will be the first to receive the “two-dimensional” industry dividend. To put it simply, the company will take the two-dimensional game as the core and use its advantages to gradually eat away the cake of the entire ACGN industry in China.

This phenomenon is particularly obvious in the segmented area of ​​the peripheral market-the figure.

According to iResearch’s “Generation Z Figures Consumer Trend Report”, in 2021, the percentage of domestic generation Z buying mobile game IP-based Figures has ranked second, second only to Riman. If you count the proportion of computer and console games, the game IP has actually surpassed the Riman IP, becoming the largest player in the peripherals and trendy games industry.

Why does this phenomenon occur?

From the perspective of user portraits, although the two-dimensional game company is essentially an Internet company, rather than a physical company focusing on the surrounding market, since most of its target users are ACG second-dimensional players who are well versed in ACG, the hand-made culture was originally from The ACG circle gradually developed and expanded.

Therefore, there is a certain user group overlap between the two-dimensional player group and the hand-made enthusiasts. They are very familiar and understand the hand-made book, which makes the game and the surrounding two markets reduce the communication cost between each other.

What’s more noteworthy is that the natural overlap between the two has been continuously fueled by game companies, such as the most representative two-dimensional company Mihayou, which has continued to increase its investment in an attempt to open up the upstream and downstream of the ACGN industry chain. According to Tianyan Check information, Mihayou’s investment company has invested in 13 companies, covering hand-made production and offline channel construction.

In addition, some seemingly “traditional” game companies, such as Riot Games, have made several attempts to enter the ACGN industry in the past, such as launching the “Blooming Soul Festival·Soul Lotus Flower” full of two-dimensional style and AVG gameplay. “Thematic events; and the creation of a virtual girl group, the launch of related girl group figures, and so on.

It is not difficult to find that all of the above are measures taken by manufacturers to open up peripheral industries with the help of games. Of course, the benefits are obvious. On the one hand, it can open up the commercialization space of game IP, and on the other hand, it also meets the needs of players for game IP and enhances the emotional connection between the two parties.

Facing the new blue ocean in the surrounding market, more types of game manufacturers are connecting

Perhaps no one would have thought that the development trajectory of the surrounding markets in Europe, America and Japan has not been staged in China.

Seeing that Sun Zhengyi’s time machine theory fails again, domestic non-two-dimensional game manufacturers can no longer bear it, and they have risen to compete for a piece of cake.

In fact, the development of games in the surrounding market is an important branch of the game IP. Based on the background of the development of IP-based games, companies such as Wenwen, Netease, and Station B have gradually begun to make efforts to commercialize their surroundings. In addition, the new cultural and creative strategy put forward by Tencent has also promoted the rapid development of peripheral industries, and has also given peripheral products a special cultural significance.

Take the game industry leader Tencent as an example. Just the day before yesterday (July 10), Tencent’s world’s first QQfamily flagship store officially opened its trial operation in Nanshan District, Shenzhen.

What is QQfamily? According to Tencent’s own introduction, QQfamily is actually a super IP that represents Tencent’s friends all over the world. It is naturally a peripheral industry derived from this IP. Users can purchase and experience various IP derivatives in flagship stores. The QQfamily physical store actually existed a few years ago, and the QQfamily flagship store is an experience upgrade.

The growth of the mobile game market makes the animation surroundings difficult to transform

For a long time, peripheral industries have been considered by the outside world to be a small circle industry, but with the rise of ACGN culture and Generation Z, China’s peripheral markets have also ushered in new growth points.

According to data from Taobao, in 2016, China’s animation peripherals began to rise rapidly, becoming one of the two fastest growing industries in the animation market, and the top three industries in terms of turnover.

Different from the past, the original animation market mainly used post-80s as the main consumer group. The products were mainly models and figures, called “hard peripherals.” Not only did the unit price of the customer be higher, but the consumption habits of these people had taken shape. The degree of circle powder has also been fixed.

However, as the post-90s and post-95s have become the main consumer groups, the purchase frequency of the two-dimensional peripherals has accelerated. However, due to their spending power, the unit prices of the products they buy are lower. Therefore, T-shirts, pillows, stationery and other more life-oriented peripherals Products became hot sellers, and these so-called “soft peripherals” began to develop rapidly.

While the surrounding industries in China are rising, ACGN, which is the source of living water, especially the animation industry, has turned its head to a younger age. The “Research Report on China’s Animation Industry in 2019” released by iResearch shows that after the opening of the second-child policy in 2016, a small population boom of low- and young animation audiences is ushering in after 2019, and the low- and young animation industry is once again favored for a long time.

The biggest income of animation comes from peripheral products. However, in the Chinese animation market, the rise of Generation Z has not changed the reality that the majority of young products are produced, and the narrow positioning of animation has also caused the development and sales of derivatives to become a huge problem. Even in recent years, many adult comics have frequently appeared in the circle, but overall, the Chinese market still lacks the foundation of adult-oriented animation, making the industry chain of animation peripherals relatively weak, and paying a few people will not change the overall market structure.

In contrast, in the markets of Europe, America and Japan where the surrounding industries are more mature, the animation industry is all focused on the general public. As a result, the target audience of these markets is wider, making the surrounding areas the main source of revenue. According to the “Japan Animation Industry Report 2020”, the ratio of the sales of Japanese animation and animation series itself to the sales of animation peripheral products is about 3:7, while in Europe and the United States, the revenue ratio of animation and its peripheral products is even close to 1: 9.

However, in recent years, affected by the aging and declining birthrate, the retail market for character goods in Japan has shrunk for four consecutive years. Among them, it includes the sale of character products with animation, comics, and games as the content, as well as the sale of character products from subdivisions such as corporate brands, celebrities, and music.

There are domestic analysts in Japan who are pessimistic about the forecast of the Japanese animation market in 2019 and 2020. Under the economic and technological situation, the rapid development of online entertainment, especially the mobile game field, has allowed animation peripheral types of physical products Facing the dilemma of transformation.

Concluding remarks

It is not difficult to find that, compared to the European, American and Japanese markets, the Chinese market, which has no cultural heritage of animation, is using games, the most fashionable and most popular way among young people, to develop peripheral industries that were originally rooted in animation. And in terms of market feedback, the results are actually pretty good, at least in the short few years of mobile game development, it has approached the market share of Riman IP.

Perhaps in the future, China’s ACGN industry, which has embarked on a different path, will lead the global development in some magical way.

This Article is curated from Source and we only provide the English version of the Story.

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