In recent years, when products are released overseas, social tracks that integrate gameplay can be described as frequent hits. Follow [Rongyun Global Internet Communication Cloud] to learn more
Especially in Southeast Asia, MENA, Latin America and other regions, combined with public data, by the end of 2022, "MICO" and "YoHo" under Chizicheng Technology have achieved the top track in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and the game social product "TopTop" has also successively Entered the TOP3 social application best-selling list in the six Gulf countries.
On the other hand, Yalla Ludo, a voice social and casual desktop game of the social game company Yalla, has been online for many years and has maintained a long-term top score in the Middle East represented by Saudi Arabia. In addition, new social products such as "Beem" and "Hektar" have also entered the top 10 vertical categories of the App Store in the Middle East and other places.
Looking at these explosive products, we can find that they have some commonalities. For example, social places such as game rooms, chat rooms, and communities are one of the core functions of these products, and continuous optimization of local user experience is also the focus of these products. In other words, without exception, these products use instant messaging and real-time audio and video functions to enhance the social attributes of the products , and in the process of products going overseas, many teams choose Rongyun, a global Internet communication cloud service provider, to complete the communication quality. Adapt to the localized experience.
As a leading instant messaging cloud brand, Rongyun started from the core technical team of Fetion. It is the first manufacturer in China to extract and package IM capabilities and provide communication PaaS services in the form of API/SDK. It has always maintained its leading position in products. For example, before Clubhouse detonated the language chat room, Rongyun had already provided a solution for the language chat room. Especially in the chat room component, which is the core of the chat room product, Rongyun has created key functions such as chat room attributes.
The domestic business is thriving, ranking first in the IM communication cloud market, and Rongyun started to enter the global market seven years ago. So far, the Rongyun global communication network has been iterated to the V4 version, serving more than 300,000 games and applications around the world, and the SDK has reached more than 8 billion users . On average, more than 5 apps on the mobile phone of each Chinese netizen have used the Rongyun business .
Based on rich and extensive global service experience, Rongyun recently released the "Social Pan-Entertainment Overseas Combat Map" (hereinafter referred to as "Overseas Combat Map") in the industry, which integrates key markets, track analysis and actual combat methodology from 0 to 1 , for the use and reference of sailors.
According to the Commonwealth of Independent States, at the "WICC Pan-Entertainment Going to Sea Carnival" held in Guangzhou on June 2, this "Map of Going to Sea Combat" has attracted the attention of many practitioners on the spot and online. Currently, the first batch of Maps have also been looted.
Dong Han, CEO of Rongyun, released the "Map of Battle at Sea" at the carnival
Why has the map attracted the attention of many practitioners? Through the map obtained by the Commonwealth of Independent States a few days ago, it can be clearly seen that social pan-entertainment products are becoming a breakthrough for many manufacturers to go overseas and make explosive models. In order to make such products well, the understanding of users in the target market and the real realization of the corresponding localized social experience are gradually becoming an important driving force for some powerful manufacturers to make long-term hits.
The structure of emerging markets tends to be younger, and users have concentrated demand for "games" and "social networking"
The "Map of Going to Sea" pointed out that as the domestic market has entered a stable stock stage, compared with two years ago, Internet companies going overseas have increased from 27.5% to 43% of the total , and more and more companies are turning their attention to Emerging markets such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America have an annual growth rate of Internet users of 10% . With the increase in the number of users in these areas and the younger user structure, local users' demand for product experience is also changing.
The map shows that compared with 2020, the proportion of domestic developers who have gone overseas in 2022 will increase by 15.5%
One of the most obvious changes is that a large number of young local users have a surge in demand for social products and game products covering social experiences.
In the Middle East, where the total population of the region is close to 500 million, although the ratio of men to women is seriously unbalanced, the trend of younger users is very obvious , and users have a long leisure time . In Southeast Asia, except for Thailand and Singapore, the population structure of most regions is also relatively young, and even more than half of the countries have a median user age below 30 years old . The same is true for Latin America. According to statistics, in the first half of 2023, the median age of the Latin American population is 30.97.
In the Philippines, Malaysia and other places in Southeast Asia, there is a clear trend of younger people
On the other hand, observing these overseas emerging markets, we can find that games and social networking are the two largest mobile application tracks in the local area.
For example, in the Latin American market, games such as shooting and strategy, and social applications covering videos and live broadcasts are listed as the most profitable tracks in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and other countries. The same situation also exists in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa where the user mobile online rate exceeds 55% .
Shooting, strategy, RPG games and pan-entertainment products are the most profitable categories in Latin America
The map shows that in Africa, in addition to games showing strong user demand, social products are also gradually releasing their potential in Egypt, Kenya and other places
The evolution of social gameplay: How to tap the incremental dividends of overseas markets?
Through the data, we can see the opportunities for social products in overseas markets, and some long-term hits also prove this point. But in practice, there are many ways for social products to go overseas. Among them, the core that determines whether the product can run is considered " matching degree " by the CIS. To put it simply, it is whether the social scene built by the product and the derived monetization model can really meet the habits of users in the target area.
Combined with the content of the "Map of Combat at Sea", the Commonwealth of Independent States has sorted out the points that several manufacturers pay more attention to when making social products.
First of all, interpret the social appeal of users more locally, so as to iterate the product experience.
In the past, the Commonwealth of Independent States has mentioned that social products led by "Yalla Ludo" have a large number of active users in Southeast Asia and the Middle East due to the extremely down-to-earth localized game content. In addition, "Map of Combat at Sea" pointed out that this is not unrelated to the accurate establishment of social scenes by the product.
For example, affected by cultural and religious habits, and different from those in Southeast Asia, users in the Middle East are especially adapted to the social mode of language chat rooms, and the trend of "anonymous social interaction" is also prominent. Therefore, in "Yalla Ludo", which supports multiplayer language chat, on the one hand, the many-to-many user chat in the game promotes the social interaction of strangers; The payment model has allowed this product to initially establish a user base in the Middle East.
Five years after its launch, "Yalla Ludo" still ranks among the top 15 free games in parts of the Middle East and Africa
Of course, it's not just this one product. In fact, "TopTop", which was developed by Chizicheng Technology and ranks among the top three social application lists in the six Gulf countries, and "WePlay", a subsidiary of Weipai Network, which broke into the Top 4 non-game overseas revenue in China at the end of last year, both use the "game room " + Language chat room" is used as the initial social scene, and then more scenes will be deepened in the long-term operation.
According to the official disclosure, the average daily usage time of "TopTop" active users reaches about 1 hour
"WePlay" aggregates more interactive games, chess and cards, board games, karaoke and other entertainment modes and 1v1 chat function
If "game + social" is the first choice for many games to enter the Middle East, then "virtual + social" has become the second weight for active users to expand the market to North America, Western Europe, Latin America and some countries in Southeast Asia.
Most of these social scenes can be divided into the interaction between users using avatars and the interaction of users in virtual scenes . The monetization methods of products mostly adopt the modes of gift, skin payment, land payment, NFT transaction and so on.
It can be seen that "IMVU", "HighRise", "ZEPETO", "Avakin Life" and other overseas top social products that have been online for more than 5 years have all adopted this method.
"HighRise" "IMVU" "ZEPETO" (from left to right)
Secondly, carry out user operation activities in a more targeted manner, so as to accumulate and break through target groups.
In order to make the product more active and longer-lasting, many companies pay more attention to extending the interactive gameplay around the content , and cover more users with the help of rich localized operations.
For example, "Map of Combat at Sea" pointed out that more and more companies are paying more and more attention to the operation and maintenance of official community channels in Discord and Geneva platforms , and even AIGC company Midjourney is directly integrated in Discord to provide Vincent map services in the form of channels.
According to the Midjourney team, they conducted a user test on Discord and found that users liked the real-time communication experience of Discord, so they decided to put the service on Discord. For them, Discord is an excellent customer acquisition platform with abundant traffic. channel.
The popularity of Midjourney brought real-time community products out of the circle again, and also ushered in a new wave of enthusiasm for Rongyun super group . Super group is a brand-new conversation type specially built by Rongyun for real-time community products. It has the characteristics of unlimited members and a three-layer product structure of "server-channel-sub-area" , and supports smooth real-time communication of a large number of users . The Commonwealth of Independent States learned from Rongyun that in the past six months, both the consultation and online volume of super group products have shown a steep growth trend. In addition to established communities like Discord, real-time communities are popular because they can be extended from various platforms such as games, and are the first choice for various applications to build user communities and deepen user operations.
While connecting target users through the community, encouraging users to create secondary businesses and spread them, while obtaining new traffic from their social relationships, offline operations are equally important if they want to build their own economies of scale and brand moats.
Li Ping, CEO of Newborn City Technology, once told the Commonwealth of Independent States that whether it is for social or game products, "label" has become more and more important , which is a test of developers' localized operation capabilities. For example, the live social product "MICO" developed by the team will hold more than 120 theme events in Japan alone in 2022, and also produced the product theme song "TUK KRUB" with over 120 million YouTube plays in Thailand.
Whether the localized social experience can be done well will become one of the new competitiveness of products going overseas
We can find that the popular products all have a wonderful commonality: they do not follow the global unified style of play , but focus more on the target overseas areas to dig out the social scenes that match the precise iteration. Among them, the developer's understanding of the target market, users' social habits and preferences, and technical resource investment are even more basic skills, which determine whether highlighting "social experience" as a solution to going overseas is effective.
Through this "Map of Going to Sea Combat" by Rongyun, perhaps the developers of going to sea can get one or two proven methodologies. Focusing on the focus of localization, it helps summarize some practical experiences and strategies in terms of track/category selection, target region adaptation, user growth, monetization model, localized operations, and multinational team management .
The sea combat map provides reference suggestions from 0 to 1 for those who go to sea
Another effective way to solve the "localized social experience" solution is to use Rongyun's overseas solutions.
Social products have higher localization requirements for overseas teams, and are more suitable for developers to clarify target regions and users, and enter the game after enduring the pressure of long-term changes. Even with such a foundation, when it comes to a certain market and a certain group, the problem of localization is still the biggest obstacle to going overseas. For example, the problem of communication network is the "big problem" that bears the brunt.
Going overseas to the Middle East, OHLA CTO Chen Xiang, who is deeply involved in chat room products, once shared that chat rooms will encounter some problems that cannot be imagined in China, and the network environment is one of the barriers. "In the Middle East, two users who may be separated by only 10 kilometers will face huge differences in the network environment."
OHLA
OHLA's choice is to hand over complex communication issues to Rongyun. As He Jie, a game practitioner, said at Rongyun’s “Social Pan-Entertainment Overseas Empowerment Meeting”, “We must know how to leverage and make full use of the professionalism of third-party services such as Rongyun.”
He also made a more straightforward calculation from the perspective of cost. If the necessary communication capabilities such as IM and RTC are self-developed, there will be many problems in the early development, testing, and operation and maintenance after the launch. "Thousands of servers, dozens of operation and maintenance personnel, not only the economic cost, but also the management cost will be very high."
Since 2016, Rongyun has followed the pace of Chinese developers going overseas to start a global layout, and has accumulated rich service experience in key areas. Its newly upgraded global communication network SD-CAN V4 can communicate , intelligent racing, dynamic confusion, intelligent heartbeat, network memory, and multi-regional unified scheduling to complete scheduling optimization in different regions, forming a huge, congestion-free global network.
Rongyun fourth-generation global communication network SD-CAN V4
Through a series of upgrades, the connection time of Rongyun's global communication network has been reduced by 30% , and the connection effect in areas with limited infrastructure has been increased by 40% .
Of course, there is no general rule for overseas localization, and the same is true for communication services. Rongyun's complete strategy package, in addition to iteratively upgrading the communication underlying protocols and technologies, also conducts a full set of combing and resource allocation for infrastructure, geopolitics, and protocol development in different regions. This is the result of Rongyun's years of service experience. , and it is also Rongyun's latest trump card to help developers go overseas. Based on Rongyun's global communication services, it further helps seagoers resolve the problem of product localization.
It is foreseeable that in the future on the overseas social track, as the product life cycle lengthens, more products are bound to find breakthroughs in social scenes more accurately, and the competition between new generation masterpieces and main products of major manufacturers will also become more intense. fierce. For those practitioners who are optimistic about the social track or have already entered the game, perhaps with overseas partners like Rongyun, they can avoid the "fatal problems" of social products on the way to sea as much as possible.
Move to [Rongyun Global Internet Communication Cloud] and reply to [Map] to obtain a social pan-entertainment sea combat map.