Pushing incentive policies, holding meetings one after another, Tik Tok and WeChat aggressively attack mini-games

The competition in the mini-game market is becoming increasingly fierce, especially between the two major platforms, Tik Tok and WeChat. The competition between the two platforms not only brings new opportunities for mini-game developers, but also provides new traffic and monetization channels for influencers on the platforms.

An increasingly popular mini-game.

At the end of March, WeChat and Douyin successively released incentive policies for mini-games. Among them, Douyin offered an unprecedented "19" profit sharing, which greatly excited the practitioners. In April, both parties held mini-game conferences one after another.

The mini-game track was filled with the smell of gunpowder.

Xinbochang also noticed that there are more and more live broadcasts and short videos about mini-games on Douyin. WeChat has also publicly stated that video account live broadcasts are gradually becoming an important growth method for mini-games.

How will the two sides compete for the mini-game pie?

1. Mini-games continue to be popular

Mini games have become the "new favorite" of young people. Everyone is either busy playing "Summon the Dragon" or "Catch the Goose". The high traffic and high revenue brought by mini games are very eye-catching. Even the financial reports of many game companies have appeared in mini games, which has directly promoted mini games to the "top stream to be exploded" in the game circle.

In recent years, there have been hit mini-games almost every year: "Synthesize Watermelon" and "Summon the Dragon" in 2021, "Sheep Sheep" in 2022, "King of Salted Fish" which became popular in 2023, and "Catch the Goose" which has been popular on the Internet recently...

According to data from Gravity Engine, "Catch the Big Goose" has dominated the WeChat mini-game popularity list for 21 days and is at the top of the mini-game list on the Douyin mini-program list.

On Douyin, the topic of "Catch the Big Goose" has been played 1.25 billion times, with many short videos and related live broadcasts about the game's strategies.

Among them, short videos are mainly game strategies. The expert is sorting things in a basket. Some are farm food, some are jewelry and jade. Occasionally, he will mutter "flip the pot", but they all have the same game rules. Collect three to eliminate them. If you don't choose to swipe away at the beginning, you will most likely be "hard controlled" by this video for a while until the blogger successfully passes the game level.

Live broadcasting records the host's gaming process in real time. In addition to the hosts who are actually completing the game, there are also hosts who choose to make mistakes on purpose to increase the show effect. This seemingly unintelligent operation can arouse more interaction and discussion among the audience.

Previously, users mostly saw mini-game advertisements in short video information streams. Now, more and more influencers have entered the market and chosen short videos and live broadcasts to promote games. Through advertising materials for various mini-games, they arouse users' curiosity through short videos or live broadcasts, prompting users to try out the games, thereby earning cash rewards from manufacturers.

In the Douyin Star Map game publisher plan, the budget for the live broadcast task of "Catch the Big Goose" is 500,000, and the settlement method with the influencers is "number of game players + income sharing". There are more than 3,600 participating anchors.

Live broadcast and short videos have become important channels for the promotion and distribution of mini games, not only for Douyin, but also for WeChat.

At the WeChat Open Class IAA Mini Games Special Session, Open Class Instructor Xue Feidan shared the "Ecological Development and Content Observation" of the WeChat Mini Games Platform, and mentioned: "We have observed that in the field of game live broadcasting, good content can reach more than 1 million daily views and a conversion efficiency of more than 5%. In terms of the performance of single product scale, the growth cycle of this type of product is very fast, and the scale of a quarter can exceed 50 million registrations and turnover."

The WeChat Mini Game team also revealed at the meeting that in the first quarter of this year, the daily active users of mini games increased by 20% year-on-year, the monthly active users of IAA mini games reached 500 million, the number of advertisers increased by 35% year-on-year, and the number of traffic increased by 15%. IAA mini games are the main contributor to the growth of overall users, and video account live streaming has gradually become an important growth method for IAA mini games.

2. Tik Tok Onslaught Mini Games

At the end of March, a policy adjustment on mini-games was interpreted as a strong signal that Douyin was going to attack mini-games.

On March 28, Douyin Open Platform announced a new policy on the settlement rules for in-game purchase revenue. Starting from April 1, Douyin mini-games will implement a new developer profit-sharing policy, dividing the settlement of in-game purchase revenue into "general in-game purchase revenue policy" and "reduced in-game purchase revenue policy".

Specifically, for small games launched on Android channels, if they meet the following requirements:

After the mini-game is launched, it has the ability to automatically access "add mobile desktop shortcut" and "configure 8 approved search keywords";

The average DAU (Daily Active User) penetration rate of the mini-game in the "homepage sidebar revisit ability" in the 30-day settlement cycle is >15%;

To enable the capabilities required by other platforms, as long as the game history can be queried during the current settlement period to obtain a record of completed signed agreements, the conditions are met.

Then, the platform will reduce this and adopt a "10:90" profit-sharing method, where developers can obtain 90% of the total consumption and can also obtain advertising incentives equivalent to 5% of the total consumption.

The unprecedented "190% profit split" has attracted a lot of attention.

Prior to Douyin's profit-sharing plan for mini-games, WeChat also launched a mini-game growth incentive plan in March: the advertising incentive ratio for IAA game developers that are not in the chess and card category was increased to a maximum of 40%.

Therefore, Douyin's aggressive attack on mini-games is also interpreted as a "hard fight" with WeChat and an attempt to grab the tempting cake of mini-games.

The challenge between Tik Tok and WeChat in the field of mini-games is not only reflected in the new policies released in March, but also in the mini-game conferences held one after another.

On April 23, ByteDance held the ByteDance Tik Tok IAA Game Conference in Changsha. The next day, WeChat held the WeChat Open Class - IAA Mini Game Special in Wuhan.

At the meeting, ByteDance announced that the Douyin platform will invest more than 5 billion yuan in resources to support the development of Douyin mini-games, including operating subsidies, project support, advertising incentives, etc.

The WeChat Mini Games team revealed at the meeting that in the first quarter of this year, the daily active users of mini games increased by 20% year-on-year, the monthly active users of IAA mini games reached 500 million, the number of advertisers increased by 35% year-on-year, and the number of traffic increased by 15%. IAA mini games are the main contributors to the growth of overall users.

The familiar "Tencent-Bytedance War" seems to be happening again in the mini-game arena after the short video...

3. What benefits does it bring to influencers?

Compared with WeChat’s social advantages, Douyin’s ability to promote the popularity of small games is largely due to its traffic and content advantages.

After long-term education with short, flat and fast vertical screen short video content, Douyin users are more receptive to such fragmented and highly stimulating mini-games; and short videos can amplify and spread the highlights and exciting points of mini-games, thus creating a natural soil for the promotion and fission of mini-games.

Data from a survey conducted by Jueliang Suansu shows that mini-game users have strong game stickiness and willingness to pay. Most mini-game users have formed long-term habits based on the category. More than 70% of mini-game users are playing two or more mini-games at the same time, and nearly 40% of users play for more than one hour a day.

However, now WeChat also has its own video account, which also has no shortage of traffic and influencers. The next competition between the two sides may also be a competition between video accounts and Douyin.

Moreover, with the concessions made in the profit-sharing policy of Douyin’s mini-games, it is bound to attract more game developers, thus further expanding the mini-game market of the platform. The emergence of more mini-games will also bring a new round of dividends to the platform’s influencers, whether it is for the promotion of games or for obtaining traffic and monetization through live games, which are all positive signals for the new round.

However, compared to game apps, the problem faced by experts in creating mini-game related content is that it is highly homogenized and difficult to come up with new content ideas. Therefore, experts tend to change mini-game products frequently. Nowadays, most of the mini-game live broadcasters have a small number of fans, and there are no benchmark cases yet.

Can Douyin pry open a hole in Tencent's impregnable game wall? After attracting more manufacturers to join, can Douyin create more popular mini-games in its own ecosystem in the future and feed back more talents on the platform? Everything remains to be seen.