Dialogue with Xiao Y Games CEO Jiang Jianwei: Games are an entertainment service and should flow on every screen

Jiang Jianwei and his Little Y Games chose to stick together. Despite the difficulties, in Jiang Jianwei's view: "Video games have reached the bottom and spring is not far away."

At the beginning of 2015, entrepreneurial teams, game companies and Internet giants turned their attention to video games. The industry warmed up, and all parties tried the water to replicate the popularity of the mobile game industry. However, just one year later, the video game market experienced a round of reshuffle, capital was withdrawn, there were few companies, and works were scarce. The entire industry suffered heavy casualties and encountered a cold winter.

As one of the few remaining video game companies after the waves swept away, Jiang Jianwei and his Little Y Games chose to stick with it. Despite the difficulties, in Jiang Jianwei's view: "Video games have reached the bottom and spring is not far away."

As

the leader of the pan-entertainment big data platform, Jiang Jianwei has always been committed to providing insight and analysis of multi-screen interactive consumption behavior. During ChinaJoy in 2016, Jiang Jianwei accepted an exclusive interview with Yi En in Shanghai, saying that opening up the value of users with multiple screens is his development positioning for Xiaoyi's games. Whether it is deploying VR or operating IP to practice movie-game linkage, although the game service is cross-screen, the value of the user is unified-in Jiang Jianwei's eyes, this is the starting point and foothold of Xiaoyi's game.

Hot first and then cold, video games are still climbing.

In the second half of 2013, with the popularity of the mobile game market, the video game market has gradually warmed up, and capital has poured in. According to Jiang Jianwei, at most, there were almost 150 peers competing with each other. Then, in the blink of an eye, 2016, video games suddenly entered the "slow lane", game manufacturers closed down one after another, and life was not easy.

Most of the voices in the industry are bad-mouthing. In Jiang Jianwei's eyes, the video game market is still on the rise, and "has not even begun to climb the slope." In his view, the survival of the fittest under competition is more conducive to the industry to eliminate bubbles and eliminate false fires. Only a few companies that can truly stand up are the future of the industry.

On the other hand, the outside world always compares video games with mobile games, which is unfair to Jiang Jianwei. "mobile games have been developing for 7 or 8 years. From Symbian to Android, they only really became popular in 2013. Video games started in 2013 and are only in their third year. The game environment with TV as the core is actually developing rapidly."

Jiang Jianwei and Xiao Y have

different mature industrial chains for games and mobile games. Although video games are still in the stage of climbing and groping, from the perspective of the general environment, Jiang Jianwei believes that there are several positive factors. First of all, user acceptance and recognition of smart TVs have increased significantly. Secondly, all radio and television operators are uniformly adopting Android boxes. The share of smart TVs in the market has steadily increased, and a demographic dividend has been formed, which is conducive to the development of value-added services.

From the perspective of market performance, smart TV sales are increasing year by year. Including set-top boxes, the user base has reached more than 200 million. Taking the game "I am MT2 TV Edition" launched by Xiaoyi Games as an example, Jiang Jianwei revealed that users use it every day for 60 minutes to 90 minutes, and the payment rate is between 5% and 8%, which is already operational. degree. "At first, I also asked myself, why do I play games on TV? But through data verification, Xiaoyi's game hall has more than 20 million users. In fact, the market for video games is not small."

Jiang Jianwei believes that the concept of playing TV has yet to be penetrated, the control of games needs to be improved, and operations need to be solved are the three major problems facing video games at present. "Users can be operated anytime and anywhere on mobile phones, but TV only has three periods in the morning, noon and evening." But no matter which screen you are on, the game is ultimately just an entertainment service. The user value between platforms is interoperable. The most important thing is how to seize the user's time: "The user's value is the value created by the user in a limited time. Value, the daily prime time period of mobile games overlaps with the TV, which is 19:00-22:30. The user value is uniform, so there must be users in the living room games. Games are entertainment services that must flow on every screen."

Hot IP operations need to seize the essential need of users for a sense of presence and identity

. In 2015, Xiaoyi acted frequently in games. The most eye-catching thing was the exclusive agency for the TV version of the well-known domestic mobile game "My Name is MT2 TV Edition". As a national IP, the "I Am MT" series of animations have been viewed more than 1.4 billion times. After migrating from mobile games to large TV screens,"I Am MT2 TV Edition" has not only filled the situation of the lack of popular products in domestic video games. The current situation has also raised the gaming experience of large TV screens to a pure 3D level for the first time.

Jiang Jianwei said that the success of "I am MT2 TV Edition" in the video game market is mainly due to the video-game linkage effect of large IPs. "I am MT2 TV Edition" originated from the super IP of "World of Warcraft". The slogan of "Warcraft in the Pocket" was also used when promoting the game. It not only has the huge fan base of "World of Warcraft", but also attracts video websites. The linkage with pan-entertainment users who like second-dimension has greatly helped the popularization of the game.

However, the reason why Jiang Jianwei chose "I am MT2 TV Edition" was not purely because of the high popularity of IP, but because of two other considerations."First of all, the most suitable and profitable game theme on TV at that time was card games. Secondly, card games rely on numbers to operate, compete for wisdom, have stronger user retention and a stronger tendency to pay for recharge, and have a clear profit model."

During ChinaJoy, Xiaoyi Games and iFlytek jointly participated in the exhibition.

In addition to the excellent IP itself, in order to increase the penetration rate of the game, Jiang Jianwei also thought about the online and offline marketing of "I am MT2 TV Edition". "Online, we ask channel partners to replace the content introduction page with Little Y's game when introducing TV, and we also leave the TV's start-up advertisements to help promote it. Offline, when users buy a TV and open the packaging, they will receive our gift cards and credit cards." Jiang Jianwei revealed that the proportion of users who convert offline marketing into games is very high, reaching 12%-16%.

In addition, Jiang Jianwei also cooperated with many manufacturers to launch the game's theme box, theme handle and theme TV to warm up before going online. In his view, video games are different from mobile games and have many channels. Therefore, it is necessary to customize the hardware and open up the entire industry chain from terminals, content to peripherals, so that users can access game promotion in all aspects of the entire process from purchasing TV to using TV. Only by having access to game promotion in all aspects can the penetration rate be maximized.

In the next step, Xiaoyi Games plans to further deepen cooperation with film and television companies to bring more quality publicity to the game through films, television and other channels. "For example, when a popular drama like" Ode to Joy "is broadcast, if you insert scenes of the male and female protagonists playing games at home in the plot, you can immediately increase the awareness of the game."

When summarizing Xiaoyi Games 'operating ideas on IP, Jiang Jianwei believes that it is more of an O2O model. "Only by settling your mind can you do your operations more carefully. You must grasp users 'needs for presence and recognition. These are the essential needs of people."

To achieve movie-game linkage, targeting the crowd, identifying the right themes and joint research and development are the key

. In Jiang Jianwei's view, although movie-game linkage is frequently mentioned nowadays, it is necessary to replicate the success of TV series hits such as "Flower Thousand Bones" that drive game hits. In the case, what is needed most is the drive from game manufacturers. On the realization path of movie-game linkage, Jiang Jianwei gave several points of attention from the perspective of game manufacturers:

First, we must accurately lock in the crowd positioning of IP."Only when the audience of TV series and the game user group overlap can we improve the success rate of movie-game linkage."

Secondly, game manufacturers and IP copyright owners must jointly develop and develop. There are two main methods for joint research and development. One is for manufacturers to directly pay IP copyright fees. Taking the popular TV series "Fantasy City" as an example, the IP can be sold at least hundreds of millions. The other is to not charge copyright fees, and the proportion of revenue will be determined after the game's development is completed.

Third, find suitable themes. At present, Xianxia themes are undoubtedly the most suitable for adapting them into games. "If any company buys the words" Water Margin "or" Journey to the West "and adapts them into a game, whether it is an RPG or an MMO, it will definitely become popular." Another popular genre is urban life dramas, such as "Tiny Times" and "Apartment of Love", which are closer to young people and easily resonate with users.

In view of the current boom in end-game IP in the industry, Jiang Jianwei said frankly that he will still give priority to end-game IP to produce video games in the future. In addition, holding hands with film and television companies is also an option, but it should be noted that "compared with the timeliness of film and television, especially movies, TV dramas may be a better choice."

Focusing on the three major needs of players, building a living room entertainment ecosystem

Jiang Jianwei believes that the three major needs of players are good content and operations, social networking and control. In terms of content and operations, Xiaoyi adheres to the distribution philosophy of "only making high-quality and strong IP games". Its games have successively broken industry records and created an industry WeChat scanning login solution and an "O2O" refined game operation solution, bringing the game distribution business into a new era. How to socialize in games in the living room scene is still a myth that puzzles many people. Jiang Jianwei's idea is that he can take the lead in seeking breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, especially voice. "You can see that whether it is Apple or Google, voice is the focus of their future artificial intelligence efforts, and it is also a very important part of future social networking."

In order to better serve players, during this ChinaJoy period, Xiaoyi Games joined hands with iFlytek, the country's largest artificial intelligence manufacturer, domestic and foreign first-class VR hardware manufacturers and game peripheral manufacturers to jointly make an appearance, using high-quality game content to open up user value and integrate "Terminal + Peripherals" The high-quality resources are strong to create a "pan-living room entertainment" ecological empire linked by the three screens of "TV+VR+ mobile phones".

Xiao Y Games and some domestic and foreign first-class VR manufacturers

Jiang Jianwei also said that during the capital winter in the first half of 2016, Xiao Y Games received a new round of investment led by iFlytek, the leader of China's intelligent voice and artificial intelligence industry. Talking about his past experience in financing, he emphasized that startups should not be blind when looking for investment, take a long-term view, and move in stages according to the company's pace.

Take Xiao Y Games as an example, it adopts a "three-step jump" strategy when financing. "When you are on Angel Wheel, you must find someone with resources. For example, if there are IP or ready-made games, one of our angel shareholders, Excellence Games, is very helpful to us. Having good content is the first step. The second step is to implement your content. Chuangdong, one of our Pre-A's leading investors, has both games and smart hardware layouts. The third step is to find people with traffic, technology or channels, which are important resources for the company to upgrade. To sum up, we must insist on putting resources first and funds second."

Editor: yvonne