Giants such as Tencent and NetEase, as well as small and medium-sized manufacturers, have poured in. Whether Auto Chess will be the next hit or a flash in the pan, the future is unpredictable

"Principal Wang finally lost." July 11 On the same day, veteran player Zhang Hai (pseudonym) recalled watching the live broadcast of the game online a few months ago.

"The competition has allowed more players to understand and like the game of Auto Chess." Zhang Hai said.

In 2019, a DOTA auto-chess game became popular in the market. This strategy game derived from DOTA2 has quickly swept the game industry in just a few months, attracting many game R&D teams including Tencent, NetEase and other giants to flock to the game.

On July 8, the "League of Legends" auto-chess "Teamfight Tactics" created by Tencent and League of Legends producer Riot Games was officially launched on the national server, together with the previous "Duoduo Auto Chess" , "Chess Rush", Tencent completed the layout of auto chess in mobile games and client games. NetEase, its old rival, is producing its most popular films, "Backwater" and "Decisive Battle!" Auto Chess gameplay is embedded in two popular games: "Heian Jing".

Under the competition between giants, more small and medium-sized game manufacturers are betting on the opportunity to make profits in market segments. The "Auto Chess" war has begun. Will it be the next hit?

Auto Chess broke out

Related trademarks have reached 37 new battles opened

"We will further debug here and enrich the hero skills a few more." 7 On March 6, Lin He (pseudonym) was in the studio urging his subordinates to modify the game data on the computer. "Get it online as soon as it becomes popular."

Lin He's team is developing an "Auto Chess" game, which is the most popular game in the market right now. But the team was making slow progress, which annoyed him: a late launch meant players were snatched away by other similar games.

"In the past six months, free chess has become so popular that it feels like the whole nation was eating chicken." Lin He said.

"Auto Chess" is a strategy battle card game derived from the well-known game DOTA2. The game divides 8 players on different chessboards. They grab the chess pieces in the chess pool in each round, select and match different chess piece combinations, and then compete against each other. They continuously obtain gold coins to purchase chess pieces and strengthen their combinations to obtain victory. Due to the novel and simple gameplay, it quickly captured a large number of players.

What excited Lin He was that auto chess began to show benefits. According to data released by Sensor Tower on July 1, the number of downloads of Duoduo Auto Chess, China’s first self-playing chess game, reached 1.1 million in the first week after it was launched on the App Store and Google Play. As of now, the global cumulative downloads, excluding the domestic Android market, have reached 4.2 million, with revenue exceeding US$1.3 million.

“The achievements of Duoduo Auto Chess have made many game manufacturers hope to seize the opportunity in a new field.” Dabai, an investor in the domestic e-sports industry, said, “With Honor of Kings, Peace Elite, etc. Unlike mainstream mobile games, which are monopolized by Tencent, Auto Chess is still a brand new category, and new categories often mean new opportunities. There is no monopoly giant in this type of game market, so it is regarded by many companies as a cornerstone of the mobile game market. Opportunities for overtaking. ”

Competition between giants

Big IP creation VS game implantation Tencent and NetEase enter the game

The explosion of auto-chess has brought many new products to the market. This auto chess game has also made the founding team of auto chess, Juniao Duoduo, unable to sit still.

Huang Xudong, a well-known e-sports commentator, also said that there is no copyright on the gameplay, and all that matters is the quality and details of the game. In the future, there will be countless "auto chess" type games on the market.

In March 2019, NetEase's client game "Nike Shui Han" announced that it would launch a new gameplay "Heroes War Chess". Soon, another popular mobile game from NetEase, "Decisive Battle!" Heian Kyo" also launched "Heian Kyo Mahjong" in the game.

"Unlike traditional manufacturers launching games independently, NetEase prefers to embed games into its games." On July 10, industry observer Guo Weiling said, "If the small game becomes popular, it can drive the original game It’s popularity. Even if it doesn’t achieve the expected results, it won’t cause much harm to the original game.”

Tencent can’t sit still. On July 2, the publisher of Duoduo Auto Chess officially announced that the game will be jointly released by the publisher and Tencent *** in mainland China.

“Obtaining the most popular auto-chess game directly determines Tencent’s position in this field.” Dabai said, “But given Tencent’s expertise in ‘horse racing’, it is bound to be unsatisfactory. Only one auto-chess game has been launched.”

On July 4, Tencent announced the launch of its self-developed auto-chess mobile game Chess Rush. On July 8, Tencent and Riot Games, the producer of League of Legends, launched the game. Teamfight Tactics is officially launched on the national server.

Guo Weiling said that Tencent’s many similar games will inevitably reshuffle the market. They will first quickly eliminate the products of other small R&D teams, and then use Tencent’s huge resources to compete with competitors of the same level. It plays a conductive effect among the group and ultimately wins the market.

There are reasons why Tencent and NetEase value auto chess so much.

Tencent’s 2019 Q1 financial report shows that Tencent’s smartphone game revenue was approximately 21.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2%; PC client game revenue was 13.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2%. NetEase’s 2019 Q1 financial report showed that its online game service net revenue was 11.85 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.3%.

“Although the year-on-year decline in game revenue is due to the impact of version numbers, I believe Tencent does not want to see popular games in the market fall into its hands. NetEase also hopes to find more breakthroughs in the gaming field, and since Moving chess may be the best market development trend,” Dabai analyzed.

Small manufacturers survive

Invite game anchors to cooperate and seize market segments

"This game has been so popular recently." At 1 a.m. on July 10, Ahua, who just finished his auto chess live broadcast, said, "Although it is still far behind phenomenal games such as Honor of Kings and Peace Elite, the number of fans has increased significantly compared to a few months ago."

2019 In April, Ahua, who had been live-streaming Peace Elite on the Huya platform, came into contact with Auto Chess for the first time and was attracted by the novel gameplay of the game. Later, he decided to change the live broadcast content of the game to Auto Chess.

"It was just gambling at the time." Ahua said that although Huya, Douyu and other platforms have successively broadcast live broadcasts of auto chess games, the fan traffic and popularity are far inferior to those of Peace Elite and King of Glory. , "The game does not have a monopoly by big anchors, giving us small anchors a chance."

Ahua broadcasts the auto-chess game online every day from 6 pm to 1 am, despite 7 hours of high intensity It made him tired, but what made him excited was that the number of fans watching the live broadcast in his room began to increase. "Usually there are 30,000 to 40,000 people watching, and the highest popularity is probably more than 100,000 people."

"Now More and more anchors are beginning to transform, and in addition to the games themselves, there is also support from game manufacturers," said Ahua. In June, a small and medium-sized game company invited Ahua with a monthly salary of 50,000 yuan, hoping that he could live broadcast the auto-chess game it developed.

"Small and medium-sized manufacturers do not have the resources and financial resources of large manufacturers, so they can only look for new breakthrough opportunities." Lin He said that he has downloaded all the auto chess games on the market, and after several tests, plans to cut into Click on the game character design. "Most of the game characters and styles on the market now are tough, and the two-dimensional and otaku culture have not yet been explored by peers."

Lin He is now urging the team to change all game characters and dubbing to cartoon women , the screen has also been modified to be more two-dimensional to please the preferences of young players. At the same time, I am looking for suitable female anchors, hoping to reach an agreement with the other party to allow the game to gain traffic.

“The entry of giants will definitely take up a large share, and the living space of small manufacturers will inevitably be squeezed.

But it has also increased the scale of the auto-chess category. What we need to do now is to enter a more segmented market and seize the opportunity among small and medium-sized echelons. " Lin He said.

Those on the sidelines gave up

The risk is too great, and no one can tell whether it will succeed.

"Forget it, the risk is too great. "After observing the market for nearly 2 months, Wang Lei (pseudonym) decided to give up the Auto Chess game.

Wang Lei once considered leading the team to create a game, but he found that Auto Chess had too many instability factors "The hot success of Auto Chess is either shrouded in the halo of big IP, or it relies on the original game itself. No one can say whether it will be successful if used alone. "

Wang Lei said that most of the current mainstream games, including Duoduo Auto Chess, Teamfight Tactics, and Heroes War Chess, are "fission" from previous games.

"Actually, the gameplay of the game itself is similar. Who can survive to the end depends on IP and resources. "Wang Lei said, "Unlike players who are familiar with MOBA games who can quickly get started with Honor of Kings, and players who are good at playing chicken can adapt to Peace Elite, Auto Chess has less in common and needs to be re-explored and adapted to play different games. "What he is more worried about is that unlike Honor of Kings, which focuses on confrontation, Auto Chess is essentially more traditional games such as chess and mahjong. The confrontation and enjoyment of the game lag far behind the former, which may cause fans to be unable to play for a long time. The game remains interesting.

According to industry media reports, the current most popular Duoduo Auto Chess has a total download volume of approximately 4.2 million on the App Store and Google Play, and Dota Underlord has a total download volume of 1.6 million. It exceeds the average level of traditional popular mobile games.

Qimai, a mobile application data analysis platform, shows that as of July 8, Duoduo Auto Chess’s performance in overseas markets is not impressive. It shows that the game is ranked below 50 in most countries, and the more important US market is only ranked 739.

“The lack of overseas markets means that auto chess is currently the most important. The market is still domestic. "Guo Weiling said, "If small and medium-sized game manufacturers invest a lot of energy, but do not achieve the expected results, they cannot save themselves by going overseas like other categories of games. This is likely to cause small and medium-sized game manufacturers to encounter huge risks. "

Auto Chess is also facing the problem of commercialization. "It is difficult for any company to prepare a license application for this category in advance. "Wang Lei said, "If you apply for a version number now, you will definitely have to wait a long time. And when that day comes, no one can tell whether auto-chess will still be popular in the market. ”