Recently, the casual game "Single-Up Basketball" has been active in the forefront of the AppStore sports list. The developer behind this game is Wuhan Xinchi Fascination Technology Co., Ltd. (SAGI GAMES). The company cooperated with WCBA to launch "Single-Up Basketball". The league plan has formed a social interaction of basketball fans online and offline, and conveyed the spirit of the game to players in all directions.
In this column, NetEase Smart Enterprise invited Zeng Rong, the founder of Wuhan Xinchi Charming Technology Co., Ltd. (SAGI GAMES), to restore the real entrepreneurial story behind casual games for us around entrepreneurial experience, product and R&D, and industry insight.
A technical person who has repeatedly changed careers embarks on the road of starting a business for the second time
"Defend the Carrot", "Angry Birds", "Temple Run", "Xiao Xiao Le", "Little Crocodile Loves Bathing" have retired in the torrent of the times. These stand-alone casual games have revived the leisurely past in memory Time, through the combination of simple and varied gameplay, the threshold of casual games is not high, it can be explored by players of all ages, and the player scale is not small.
Wuhan Xinchi Magic Technology Co., Ltd. (SAGI GAMES) is one of the star manufacturers on the casual game track. Founded in 2017, it is a young game start-up company built by hardcore gamers. As early as the beginning of the company's establishment, SAGI GAMES has been deeply involved in the field of casual games, and has successively released well-known games such as "Heads-Up Basketball", "Genius Gunner", "AnimalTD", "Street Fight", "TankWarning" and so on. It has achieved good market performance, dozens of games have accumulated hundreds of millions of players around the world, and excellent game works have enabled the company to enter a period of stable development.
These achievements did not come overnight. The founder Zeng Rong took up the responsibility of starting a business for the second time. Starting from the most basic work, he is an art teacher who can write codes, a programmer who understands business management, and a project manager and product planner. His multiple professional identities converge in on this entrepreneur. He laughed and called himself "Fire Captain". Obviously, he loves games and can rationally look at everything about games. He understands the publishing market and the technical trends of game development. He understands all employees and knows how to adapt to human nature to drive talents. .
During the unforgettable Spring Festival holiday at the end of 2019, the epidemic suddenly raged in Wuhan. Facing the unexpected attack of the new crown virus, SAGI GAMES in Wuhan, like all commercial organizations, is in the center of the storm. As the Spring Festival approaches, many members have returned to their hometowns, all logistics have been shut down, traffic has been paralyzed, and it is difficult to even eat.
The whole team came into contact with "online office" for the first time during the fight against the epidemic. After briefly breaking away from the original order and rhythm, the team quickly invested in the critical period of research and development of new game projects. For a game company, the first thing to overcome when working from home is hardware and software, and finding a suitable office computer and graphics tablet is imminent. Zeng Rong and the team transferred equipment between different cities, and some members walked 4 kilometers back and forth to retrieve the computer monitor, which ensured the working conditions.
"The whole city of Wuhan was closed. In that environment, we started to collaborate remotely." Zeng Rong, the founder of SAGI GAMES, recalled, "Although the epidemic has a great impact on work efficiency, we still persisted." Surviving the epidemic, Xinchi yearned to return to normal office, and finally became stronger because of withstood the crisis. The core team of agile development tended to be stable, and explored the best business model, and more and more coordinated planning, production and operation.
Entrepreneurship is the process of constantly changing oneself from research and development thinking to market thinking
Like other entrepreneurs, Zeng Rong encountered a cognitive change in the early stages of entrepreneurship. "Only after abandoning idealistic fantasies can we really embark on the road of entrepreneurship." Zeng Rong sighed.
As a serial entrepreneur, Zeng Rong would like to give entrepreneurs a suggestion that there is no experience that can be completely replicated. Compared with successful cases, entrepreneurs should pay more attention to failures. They should not only focus on their own failures, Pay more attention to the real problems that others have encountered, and you will often get greater inspiration.
Games are both commodities and works of art, which must condense the interests of team members. This is the dream of most gamers, and SAGI GAMES is exactly like this. Adhering to the vision of "creating long-term great games and creating the best environment for the team to succeed" and the mission of "changing lives with games", the team concentrates most of their energy on polishing the game works and fully invests in the development of the game Among them, the commercialization of works is realized through external cooperation channels.
In the process of finding a publisher, many problems gradually emerged. It is difficult to find a publisher for casual games with in-app purchases. The game is very satisfactory, why is the commercial effect mediocre? This question confuses the team.
After figuring this out, the company decided to build its own distribution team. This choice is very important, because the company cooperates with publishers to promote, and cannot obtain comprehensive information and data, let alone specific details: what is doing well, what Places need to be adjusted, which ones should be persisted and which ones should be abandoned. In addition, some publishers know very little about game products, and make decisions based on experience without basis, which will not only fail to promote game products efficiently, but may even lead to unfavorable results.
“You can’t just have dreams, but you also need to have a practical market strategy,” said Zeng Rong, who came from a “technical school” in game research and development. cognition. For example, in the early days, everyone was very repulsed by the monetization model based on IAA, and there was insufficient research on the payment model of the game, which is the key to the success of many well-known games.
Zeng Rong concluded that the gamers in the entire team have a kind of cuteness for loving games, are obsessed with "fun" and "high quality", and are ashamed to talk about business thinking and fees. In fact, "creativity" and "business" do not conflict, but the two ways of thinking are quite different, and it is not easy to convince them.
In this regard, another suggestion Zeng Rong gave is that entrepreneurs must first think about a good profit model, and break through the gap between "creativity" and "business" by formulating a reasonable business model. Don't think that once a product is made, it will definitely be sold. If you go, you will be able to sell well and support the company.
Generally speaking, the income of the game comes from several aspects such as time purchase, in-app purchase, advertising revenue and buyout. Casual games usually provide "free" basic services, that is, the "Free To Play" model, which attracts users to download games through market distribution, and then obtains commercial income through users' in-game advertisements or payment behaviors.
In the past few years, the SAGI GAMES team's understanding of the business game model has undergone tremendous changes, from pure advertising monetization to hybrid monetization. From 2020 to 2022, the research and development direction of most of the company's products will shift to moderate casual games, mainly in-app purchases, from "completely free" to "free value-added", that is, on a free basis, from providing services with additional conditions benefit from. Most users can still enjoy the game for free, and a small number of users who are willing to pay for value-added services are charged to find a balance between "business" and "fun", and ultimately create a diverse business closed loop.
Crossing the river by feeling the stones in no man's land anchors the 1V1 sports competition track
China is still the best individual game market, but under the influence of regulatory policies such as "minor protection" and the tightening of version numbers, Zeng Rong believes that going overseas is a direction worth trying. He conducted a survey on overseas tracks. Series of surveys and research: The overseas casual game market is much larger than the domestic market, especially with the development of emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.
"Going overseas began in 2019. The game that has been developed has not yet obtained a version number. We went to overseas markets while waiting for the version number." Zeng Rong introduced. The celestial body or land is released to the outside world for the first time, often following the name of the discoverer. SAGI GAMES coincides with this, and because the early employees and founders are Sagittarius, "SAGI GAMES" got its name overseas.
In Zeng Rong's view, going overseas is not the best way to solve the problem of game start-ups not having a version number. For small-scale game companies, going overseas will directly compete with game giants, and the latter has been operating in overseas markets for several years and has more advantages in technology, rules, experience, etc., leaving a lot of pressure for small game start-ups. At the same time, if you want to go overseas, it is best to have overseas companies, overseas bank accounts, and overseas contacts. This is also a challenge for Chinese companies. "If you want to go to sea, you must consider these factors."
The overseas game market is completely different from the domestic game market. There are significant differences in user groups, themes, and gameplay in major emerging markets, which means that R&D, launch, and operation will also change accordingly. In order to gain a thorough understanding of the overseas market, the company has built an overseas team and launched a comprehensive campaign on overseas advertising platforms such as Facebook, Google, AppLovin, and IronSource.
Fortunately, the casual game products produced by SAGI GAMES, represented by Genius Shooter (Genius Shooter), have sprung up overseas and have a stable user base. "Genius Gunner" is a competitive shooting game in which players can experience the fun of competition. Its overseas release and operation have been a great success. The domestic version number has also come down, and this product has also been transferred to domestic operation.
As Zeng Rong said, operating this matter is very important for medium-to-long-term games. This company is good at 1V1 sports and competitive casual games. The market performance of many games is very impressive, which is inseparable from refined User Operations.
Overseas, Xinchixiang keeps in touch with players through emails and Facebook groups, while in China it conducts user operations based on IM tools such as QQ and WeChat. Through interaction, the team also truly felt the players' love for their own games, and also gained a vivid and vivid group portrait of the players.
Some "knowledgeable" players actively urge updates and point out some professional issues, which in turn "teach" game manufacturers to be more professional. "When rewards are given after reporting bugs, players will be very happy and thank us sincerely," Zeng Rong said.
Once, a Brazilian player of Genius Shooter was robbed of his mobile phone, and his game account and data were lost. After that, the player persistently contacted the company by email, hoping to help him retrieve his account. The importance of this game in the hearts of players can be seen.
In terms of game security operations, NetEase Yidun and SAGI GAMES have fought side by side in the protection of game originality, solving problems such as plug-in intrusion, game resource sales, malicious cracking, and memory modification that affect game security and fairness.
The "piracy" of popular games has been a problem that has plagued the industry for many years. On Taobao and various trading platforms, black products sell game resources, crack accounts, and customize plug-in tools, and the situation is relatively rampant.
Zeng Rong said that, on the one hand, the Xinchixiangxiang team used the tools of NetEase Yidun to obtain a better anti-cheat effect. On the other hand, the team sent a lawyer's letter to the infringing unit through legal means, requesting to take it off the shelf and stop the service. Together, the game is currently not affected by any piracy. Click to try the game anti-cheat product for free
write at the end
When asked about the principles of personal entrepreneurship, Zeng Rong chose to summarize them in three words: "persistence", "learning ability" and "sincerity". "Sincerity" stems from my own experience from technology to business in the process of starting a business.
At that time, he encountered many incomprehensible things, and many game publishers tried to "empty hands and white wolves". Despite experiencing all kinds of hardships and disappointments along the way, Zeng Rong said that he will not give up the habit of "sincerity", but he has established a system for judging and judging people. Hidden under this answer is the pure heart of a technical practitioner.
Since last year, SAGI GAMES, based on its own advantages integrating R&D and publishing, has contacted local game companies and entrepreneurs in Wuhan in multiple ways, hoping to form a circle of game industry alliances, and in the fierce competition, step on the pits that the previous ones have stepped on Either way, the entrepreneurial experience gained can be successfully transferred to successors to help game entrepreneurs make pure choices and grow together.