Minigames Gold Rush: The $7B Opportunity western devs missed by Lemon Choi

Publishers are willing to spend the money on the UA for to drive the growth of their whole minigame market. You can see the number of the advertisers grew by almost nearly 200%.

It is quite crazy because, last, like I say, last two years, if you talk about midigam maybe three years ago, nobody knows that what that is. But now, everybody is heavily invested in this domain.

If you look at the

player profile or their demography, you will see a very balanced and broad and engaged player profile. The gender is almost very evenly split between the male and female.

If we look at the geography, the penetration is evenly split between the high-tier CD and the low-tier CD. If we look at the core

player group, young and middle-aged adults form their core user group for the 24 to 14 years old, and almost half percent, half uh of them are very young age.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's special episode. I'm Le Mong.
Today, we are going to talk about China's minigame. For those who don't know me, I'm Le Mong.

I talk about WeChat Minigame NASA on 2.5 Gamer. I think the episode is still quite popular.
And I'm a WeChat Minigame blogger. I have over 17,000 subscribers within the industry.

And also I'm the founder of HyperJoy. HyperJoy is a game development studio.
We focus on building a tower defense game for the global market.

I also have a pleasure to work as a consultant for Scopely, advising them on the China's minigame market opportunity.

I've been also speaking about the China's minigame this year and the Poké Gamework Nest Shanghai. So without further ado,

we are going to cover today. We will start with minigame market overview and then we will look at the key general benchmark metric.

After that, I will highlight some of the top winners in the space and we will finish with key takeaway for our discussion.

So let's dive into the first part, minigame market overview, which I will give you a high-level understanding about the whole WeChat minigame or mini-game market.

I make a tool recording about how the minigames play in WeChat and the Chinese TikTok Do Ying. As you can see, you don't have to download anything.

You just open the game inside this super ad and you can play them in a very convenient way.

That's a very frictionless experience compared to the traditional app store game then you have to download the game for the app store and then you can only play it after you finish download yeah on the luichi and minigame i'm playing the gospel harbor on the right i think i'm playing some screw gen things like that yeah okay

Let's move to the next page. Here I made a very clear comparison between the traditional App Store game and the minigame.

Like the minigame offer a very convenient experience for the player to play the game without download anything.

And then due to the frictionless experience and also without download and the UA cost is quite lower compared to the traditional App Store game.

You can see that MIDI game starting to grow for the past few years and then Two years ago, maybe three years ago, you talked about minigame. Nobody knows what the minigame is.

But now everyone is talking about the minigame opportunity we see a very significant year-over-year growth in the last two years and I think I think their market growth is still going to continue but in a much more slow pace also in additional to the growth in the market side you can see the scale of the US spending it also maintained a very steady outward channel here we caught that uh for go rush for a recent study for the third quarter of 2023 the minigame uh sector has shown significant growth in both the number of the game launch and the number of advertisers.

Yeah, I think this

builds a very healthy growth in terms of whether it's the supply for the new game, but also

more and more publishers are willing to spend the money on the UA for to drive the growth of their whole minigame market. You can see the number of the advertisers grew by almost nearly 200%.

It is quite crazy because, last, like I say, last two years, if you talk about me again, maybe three years ago, nobody knows that what that is. But now, everybody is heavily invested in this domain.

If you look at the

player profile or the demography, you will see a very balanced and broad and engaged player profile. The gender is almost very evenly split between the male and female.

If we look at the geography, the penetration is evenly split between the high tier city and the low tier city. If we look at the core

player group, young and middle aged adults form their core user group for the 24 to 14 years old and almost half percent, half

of them are very young age player. Also, if you look at the developer side, the small and median team are winning in this mini-game market.

18% of the developer team are 5 to 13 people, and they are currently over 400k minigame developers.

If you talk about hypercapital game, and this game can be done in maybe four weeks, and we talk about hybrid game or mid-core game, and some game with very complex meta system and gameplay usually take about three to six months.

The average cost for developing a feature-rich minigame is about $115,000, dollars, which is 1 million RMB. I think the cost efficient is quite strong.
Here, I mean the

feature-rich minigame is something like Caprival Go or Survival Io type gameplay with a very complex meta game. Yeah, not just some very basic puzzle game or hypercapital game.

So you see the productivity here in China is very strong.

Part 2, we are going to talk about minigame genre, and and we are going to share something about the metric, benchmark and data for different genres to give you a very solid understanding about the whole market chain.

If we bring down the whole minigame market into three major genre,

we have a hybrid game and we have a hardcore game and casual game. And in the hybrid, we have a very fast-growing genre like the Tau Defense Rock Line and Ido RPG.

Hardcore game, we have their X game and SLG game. SLG means 4X in Chinese contest.
And simulation gain and the Chinese RPG game for casual game, hypercasual, merge 2, and match 3.

I think these are the main big three genera in the minigame market. Looking at the UA spending between this genera, the market is shifting towards hardcore game.

Casual games are also in a significant growth area because the

last year, particularly and which are trying to convert their

existing audience into media game player. So, the way they convert is to provide them with some casual game, and so that's the reason why the casual game is in a very fast growing stage.

Their hybrid genre, however, are seeing a contraction due to a lack of innovation.

So, if you look at the US spending and their sub-genre level, you can see here their casual game growth is mainly driven by merge and their match gain here you will see about 6.6% of their total US spend and also

you will see even though the whole hybrid gain are in a decline the tower defense gain you can see here is remain quite stable

and for the rest the RPG 4x gain and Idol score RPG are showing a modest but very slow growth if you look at the sub-general UA spending and you will see as the quarter of the first quarter of this year, and the media game market is very heavily concentrated.

The top three sub-general, like the RPG, Hybrid, and Tower Defense game together, and they account for nearly 16% of the total UA spend.

Cash or gas still remains very niche genre in the midigam market, unlike in the Western market.

So, I think there's a huge difference between the media game market and the Western uh mobile game market you the growth here in media game is mainly driven by the mid core game or the rpg game if you look at the competition between different subgenera you will see that in most subgenera the market share is concentrating around just a few top winner for a game for a new game to succeed this year you need to have the both or the best quality of the game but also the best quality of the ua you need the both in order to succeed in today's market.

I think the competition is very cutthroat, so you will see the success rate for difference genre as in a very low compared to last year.

Here you can see the first genre and the top 10 of the forest gain

taste out 96%

of the UA spending.

Clearly, a winner takes our genre. And for here, you can see also the merge and match genre.

Nothing 2% of the US spend are concentrating among the top 10 games. So if you're top 12 and top 20 or something else, you don't stand a chance in this market.
So you see

the bar for different genres are rising. Let's go to the UA benchmark for difference genre.
And you can see we have the CPN and CTR and CVR for difference genre here.

By casual GAM,

look at it here, which means the hypercatchial or puzzle GAM.

If we look at the CPN, it has 15 to 25 IMB CPN. The CTR is 2.8 to 3%

CTR. It's quite higher compared to other genera.
And for scan here, SLG, and if we look at the CPN, something between 13 to 14

IMB CPN. CTR is 1 to 1.2%

CTR. If we look at the

retention metric for different genres here, we have the new user retention, but also we have the paying user retention.

I think this is quite difference metric between difference genre here and for the new user retention here we have something ranging for 7% to 22%.

If you look at the merge and the match gain here, it has the highest retention for day one, 17% to 22%.

If we look at the day one paying user retention, you see the 4x and the RPG GAN has the highest day one paying user retention ranging for 18% to 85%.

I think this is the most important metric where we are

deciding whether a game is good or bad during the soft launch stage because like the mid gang,

you don't have to download the player come and go very easily. What does matter is whether the paying user will stay and continue to pay.
So

day one paying user retention, I think, is quite important for hardcore or mid-core genre.

If we are looking at the payback period and LTV growth for different genera, you will see for the 4S gain which here the SLG have a payback period of

8 to 10 months for most other genera have their payback period and 4 to 6 months.

Conversely, genera like the light casual game offer very quick return but also with a very lower LTV multiplier. LTV multiplier here means how how much time can your day one LTV grow

and which means most of the top general leader scale UA and less than 2% day one ROAS with a very strong LTV multiplier.

So based on the previously discussed chance and metric and benchmark what are the opportunity for different genre?

Generas like teledefense, merge and match and 4x scan are growing and despite fierce competition they offer potential for new heat if you have an innovative idea.

General like, however, general like hybrid RPG and simulation are declining and saturated and making it very difficult and challenging for the new game.

And finally, general like RPG and idle car RPG are stable. They have seen slower growth but still offer opportunity due to more moderate competition.

Next part, part three, we are going to talk about new successful minigame.

The first game I'm going to talk about is Ice War 3 Kingdom. It's a wilderness survival clone in Chinese 3 Kingdom theme.
It's top grossing number one in the Weecher minigame.

Very strong competitor compared with the wider survivor.

Let me play the UA creative. You can see they are using very similar UA creative for wilderness survival, just make it in Asian Three Kingdom theme.

Their strategy is pretty simple: copy your existing proven 4x scan in the West and make it more lookalike thing, like Three Kingdom.

Three Kingdom is by far the best thing for 4X scan, and then you pair with some strong UA and then scale this game really crazily in the media market. Move to the next one is also a 4S scan.

It's a pop war with a 4X combination. It's developed by JoyNet Game, the one for legend of mushroom.
Let me play their gameplay and the UA creative together.

You can see the forex map here, and also the pop monk uh card and the character here.

You have the uh the card collection RPG and the beginning, and then it slowly moves you to toward the forex gameplay and day seven.

Game used to be the number four uh growth in game in the original minigame

to one, but then uh experience a slow decline over the next uh

quarter to maybe something like the

uh 16.

okay let's move to the next one this is a loop bomb warrior publishing by uh 137 gang the one for nobody adventure chop char and puzzle survival if you remember uh nobody adventure and it's a very uh

original loop boss rpg and used to be the number one growth in game in the which minigame market until the wild survivor come back to China to dethrone this game.

Yeah, there one, I think this one is still in a soft launch stage and there are some Western countries now. You can see they are trying to use this DARN RPG action RPG theme with some

loot box RPG meta system.

It's performing quite well this year in the beginning when they launch. The next one I'm going to talk about Bambi Survivor.

While I'm talking about this game, this game is quite old, but it's still the top three growth in game in the Wichita Minigan market.

It used to be the top one growthing, number one growing game in the Wichita game, making daily revenue more than 1 million per day. And it's developed and published by Cloud Ocean Star.

Cloud Ocean Star is considered to be the happy in China because everyone's copy Bambi Survivor meta system.

I think there's a great potential for success in the Western market by combining a better thing with a more simplified meta system.

We already see the success of Galaxy Defense in the last maybe few episodes in Pool 2 and Half Gamer. So we expect to see some

more

westernized Bambi Survivor games. to succeed in the future.
And the guess Bambi Survivor is so successful that they have to make their own IP to expand to the 4S genre.

They just soft-launched this game last week and it's built upon their whole Bamben Survivor IP. The gameplay is quite similar to Kingshaw with downward combination.

And let me play the UA creative for you.

If we play their Bambi Survivor long enough, you know the Bamben Survivor have a seasonal 4S scan more and the latest game stage and so maybe they validate the X gameplay in their previous game, and then they decide to move into this full 4x game title for this IP.

Moving to the next title is also developed and publishing by CloudOcean Star. It's a Lucky Defense with Span Band Survival Meta Assistant combination.

Last year, Lucky Defense sub-genre is very popular. It's also very hyper-saturated with almost more than 18 competitive clones.

Everyone is trying to make a LD lucky defense clone, but only this title success.

So let me play their

UA creative.

I think they are doing quite well also in some Asian country. Why they succeed,

I believe it has a great thing to do with the meta system. They build a very strong, robust meta system to monetize their player and also play

pre provide them with a very long-term goal to play the game. Other for others, simply copy their 111 lucky defense.
It doesn't work out well on the Wichiminigan market.

This year, they also have a new title

built upon the 111 lucky offense. I bet they change the name to Spin Squad later.
They're also

quite successful right now. Let me play the UA Creative.
Yeah, you can see the comparison between these two games. On the right is the 111 lucky offense of Spin Squad.

On the left, you can see there is the Mao Shin Sushin, the one developed by Cloud Ocean Star. It used a very similar art style

to Ace Craft, the Cuphead

cartoon style. And the Cloud Ocean game also have external studio working on Throne 4 Plus Bambi Survivor Meta System game.
This game is also doing quite well this year in the Witch Minigan.

It's grossing 20 in the market. Basically, it's

a refined

King Throne 4 meta gameplay with the Bamban Survival Meta System. It is doing quite well, but they don't have the 4X like the King Shah.

Moving to the next one, it's the Batpet Tower Defense with Bamban Survival Meta System. It is also developed and publishing by Cloud Ocean Star.
It is a very successful tower defense game.

It is currently still the top 10 in tow growing chart.

Yeah, they also launched this game in the western country, but it's not doing that well due to the complexity in the meta system.

They are still self-launched this game in some Asian and Western countries. I think this is the best performing BatPad tower defense game in the Chinese mini-market.

For 2024 BatPet Tower Defense Game, there are more than 200 developers doing this

BatPad tower defense

genre. It's quite competitive, but this game is the

clear winner. And also we see other developer built upon the 111 titles and here this game is called Was

an Army Defense Tower Defense Army Defense Game and Tower Defense Local Line and it's top

35%

in the Takarosin which minigame estimate monthly revenue more than 5 million And the gang successfully implement and refine the core mechanic for ball vs. zombie, which is for 111 fail title.

But they built it with a more robust

meta system for Bamban survivor.

It's developed and published by Glacier and the one behind the X-Hero and they are considered to be the Chinese nester of Hero Wars using very puzzle gang with their idle car RPG competition.

This game is the one spending daily UA more than two million. It is a summer and merge game.

The gameplay is quite similar to Bambang Survivor, but they changed the button part to something like the Russian Royale, Summer and Merge, and it's quite random.

And this game is performing quite well at this year.

I think it's the best performing tile defense scan in the Chinese market this year and I think they are going to launch this game in the Western market in Kyrgyz.

And let's wait and see how they perform. And also, we have some Bamban survivor variation with Shooting Out.
This game is currently

13 growth in the Wichi Minigan market. Same meta system and like Bamban Survivor, you don't have to move the car to like the survivor I/O.
The car will auto-dry and then you just choose the scale.

It's very idle, and it's basically a bamboo survivor clone in a different way. You can see their

UA creative is quite stunning.

Happy, happy is also invested in the medigam market.

When they launched the Capybarago in the Western market, they also have their own Capybarago reskin version for the Wichita Medigam market. Let me play the video here.

You can see it's basically Capybara Go in a different skin. Again, peak and rent are top 13 on the witch media game market and then decline very fast and falling out of 100 by late April.

Because I think for HABI, their meta system is not that strong enough to compete with other competitors with the Bamban survivor meta system in China.

In the West, I think they are doing quite well, but in the Chinese market, I think they have a hard time competing with Bamban Survivor Meta System.

Also, HAP is testing Capybarico 2.0 in the Chinese which meet

basically is a score score RPG and build upon the Capybarago meta system. No, no meta system.

They are using a new meta system similar to Wito Defender, which is score RPG.

But the gameplay is a score RPG battle and similar to the Capybara Go with

random events. Basically, they made this game and two versions.
The Chinese version is called JD Sango. They also have a Western version, Ace Monster.

I believe they solve launched this game in Vietnam last year, and I

going to self-launch again in some Western countries soon. But this game is still

not performing that well based on my information. I still need more time to fine-tune this game before it reaches a global scale

standard. And also, Heavy is also testing a new game

using very similar gameplay like Crash Crass and with their own new meta system. It's called Shu Guo Ying Shong Flu Hero.

Let me play the video for you. Still in a soft launch stage and I believe this game have a

better metric compared to the previous one. I think they are going to launch this game maybe in this year.

Yeah, the gameplay is quite similar to the Supercell Sunset title Crash Crash, which is something like you just take on the same unit and it will disappear and then attack the enemy. And then if you

it kind of got like the how to say the puzzle RPG genre similar to maybe some tech and tat to match genre with some RPG element. Let's talk about some ad monetization

title, IA driven title. This is a very successful

title in the TikTok minigame. It's tagrossing IA again in the Do Ying which is Chinese TikTok minigame and it's only at monetization.
The development

cost for this game is less than 20k and but the estimate ad revenue is more than 1.5 million. Let me play the gameplay for you.

It's heavily uh inspired by the very duels title gear five but in a different theme and yeah, their core strategy is to leverage their uh tick tock live stream organic chaffy.

How they are doing how they are going to do that, but they develop and integrate 15 more than 15 distinctive uh

side game modes within the main game. Each mode will be the focus of a weekly live event, creating a constant stream of new content to attract and engage our viewers.

So, in this game, you can only play this demand gameplay, you have maybe more than 15 to 20 different gameplay to enjoy. And then you will, yeah, let's move to the next one.

I think this one is more very interesting one because you are making basically making the Western top UA creative into a minigame.

It's a number one top two in the top losing IA game in the WeChat minigain. It's a top number one top popular game in the WeChat Minigan.
And

estimate the daily US spend is

maybe 15k and their daily ad revenue is 1K per day. Let me play the video for you.
You can see it's basically steal their idea for a royal match or royal kingdom and make it into an actual game.

Let me replay here for you. This game has crazy

15.6 side game mode in the main game. You need to watch the ad to unlock each one.
So, the last part will be some key takeaway for today's session.

So, the most important thing to remember is that minigame market is not mini at all. In 2024, its revenue surpassed 6.97, which is close to 7 billion.

It has over 500 million monthly active users and support over 400,000 developers. Most of them are small to medium-sized teams.

So I think the markets continue to grow, but it's a very slow pace compared to previous year. And it still presents a huge opportunity for the gray gang and also a gray team.

Some chain we are seeing is the west to east chain, major global power big player like Supercell and Central Gang. They are bringing their gain to the Wichita minigame.

Yeah, like Supercell is going to launch the Crash Royale maybe in next month or something like that uh broadstar is already on the which minigame kingsha when they centricam already soft launched this game on the wich medigam market in the last uh few weeks and they are going to scale this game very aggressively soon and also we are seeing the gospel harbor for microfront is already launched on the wichimidigan last year it's uh doing pretty good as more and more uh chinese games are scaling uh very aggressively in the uh asia country uh we are also expecting to see more successful uh future minigames into the western region the challenge is that there are meta system too complex if you try to make it successful you must to simplify the gameplay simplify the meta system in order to succeed in the western uh region Let's wait and see.

I believe we see more titles like Galaxy Defense, Legend of Marshall,

some some new minigames succeeding in the Western country in the near future. Also, there's a lot of

iteration, innovation, general opportunity happening in the whole minigame market.

You see here, the top genre are experimenting a lot of new innovation idea like teledefense or with look like social with teledefense and the RPG here with social plus RPG and also the 4x gan You see Ido RK with 4x scan simulation with 4x scan can play.

The casual one, we already saw the one

trying to turn their UA creative safety key into the actual gameplay. So there's a lot of innovation and iteration happening here, not just simply copy care for the Western title.

I think there's all a very strong team here doing some very

great innovation in different genres. So involving MIDI midigan, I think there's only four key takeaways for this session.

The one is midigas not mini is present a huge opportunity for grade gain and grading.

If your game is doing quite well in the western market, you can find a local publisher to help you to publish your game in the midigam market. I think it's going to do quite well as well.

For the west to the east, big player like Supercell and the Century Gain are already in the midigam market. Who else? Maybe Scoply, maybe some other big player, we also in this space.

And it's too global. We already see their success story like the Bambi's Survivor in the HR market, Legend of Mushroom, and the Galaxy Defense.

And so we expect to see more successful media game in the global market. And also, if you are a publisher or developer investor and try to find a grating here in China.

I think there's a great abundance of them,

especially in the Forex genre, make core genre and the teledefense merge too. I think in this genre, the Chinese developer are leading up the global chain.

So I think there's a great opportunity here whether you're a publisher trying to find some new great game and also your investor trying to find more great thing to invest in.

I think you should not miss a Chinese minigame. So

that's it. Thank you for your time.
If you like to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn or you can add me on WeChat by searching the Chinese Ningmong Yo Shi Shro on WeChat.

And hopefully, next year, maybe we see some new minigame change. I'm looking forward to share with you next year.