On August 25, Gamescom 2024 came to an end in Germany. The show hit new highs on many figures, with the total number of views of the opening night live video exceeding 40 million, double the number of views in 2023. In the end, the exhibition attracted more than 1,400 exhibitors, with a total of 335,000 participants from more than 120 countries, exceeding the 320,000 in 2023 and setting a new high since Gamescom's launch.

The development of domestic games and the PC video game industry has been more prominent in North America and East Asia for a long time. However, after the epidemic, with the closure of E3, Cologne has become one of the most watched European and American game exhibitions this year. Many manufacturers have also moved their muscles to the show. The purchasing power of European players has naturally become the focus of competition between East Asian and North American manufacturers. On the opening night of the exhibition, North American forces had a slight upper hand, and the news of new titles such as "Civilization 7", "Borderlands 4" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark: Ancient Circle" attracted the attention of players. In the subsequent award ceremony, East Asian forces found their way back, and "Monster Hunter" swept many awards, reflecting its huge influence in Europe. And although "Little Nightmare 3" was released by Bandai Namco in Japan, Europeans still left many awards for this product made by Europeans. At this exhibition, it is no longer only Japan that supports East Asia, but Chinese manufacturers have become more and more presence. Of the more than 40 new games announced on opening night, 15 games were related to Chinese manufacturers. It includes many new and old manufacturers such as Tencent, NetEase, miHoYo, Stacked Paper, Xishanju, etc. As a game show with PC/console as the main selling point, Chinese manufacturers did not have much presence at Cologne. Domestic games going overseas have also been labeled as "mobile games-based" for a long time. However, in recent years, especially with the award of Black Myth: Wukong at the exhibition last year, this stereotype is being broken. This year, the products of Chinese manufacturers no longer only focus on mobile phones, but are oriented to a wider range of platforms, and truly stand at the same table with European, American and Japanese manufacturers. Among the domestic games, Tencent has the most participating games. Its global publishing brand Level Infinite brought more than a dozen games to the exhibition, including original IP projects developed by core studios, as well as self-developed products invested in and acquired studios, and categories also covered shooting, management, SOC, SLG and other genres, among which the shooting category became the biggest highlight of the exhibition. NetEase, miHoYo and other manufacturers followed. NetEase's "Marvel Brawl" has attracted attention, and a new life simulation work, Floatopia, has also been announced. miHoYo's "Genshin Impact" won the Best Mobile Game award, which is the second time it has won the award after "Crashing Iron". Other manufacturers are focusing on promoting their core products for the world, such as "Infinite Warmth" by Paperfold and "Limiting Machine" by Xishanju, which have not received a lot of attention. "Black Myth: Wukong", which won the best visual effects award at the exhibition last year, also participated in the exhibition with a promotional video this year. The popularity of the game is a testament to the strength of Chinese manufacturers and brings confidence to their Chinese counterparts participating in the exhibition. This exhibition can be regarded as a small outbreak of domestic action games. miHoYo's "Jeopardy Zero" and NetEase's "Naraka: Bladepoint" are all products with outstanding market performance. Lingyoufang's "Shadow Blade: Zero" did not forget to tweet to congratulate the success of "Black Myth: Wukong" while participating in the exhibition. Seeing that the black myth was done with the buyout system, Shadow Blade Zero, who was originally hesitant about the payment model, didn't know if he would change his mind, and finally decided to do the buyout system. Although the focus of each manufacturer is different, this year's Chinese manufacturers' overseas actions are consistent, that is, they attach importance to the PC platform and console players. At the very least, the exhibited products are also multi-terminal distribution, and many products even tailor-made clients for PC players. During the exhibition, everyone was discussing what impact "Black Myth: Wukong" will bring to Chinese manufacturers. In fact, the influence of "Black Myth" was already in effect long before its launch. The appearance of many domestic PC games this year has shown that both large and small manufacturers have laid out PC projects early, and this year it is actually time for manufacturers to gain something.

The reason for the impact of domestic manufacturers in IP protection and hardcore categories is not complicated, and at a time when the growth of mobile users is stagnant and dividends are gradually disappearing, everyone is looking for opportunities to expand the player base. According to Newzoo's statistics, the fastest growth in 2024 is the PC platform, which has increased by 4.0% from last year, becoming the driving force for the growth of the gaming industry. In addition, there is also a low degree of overlap between PC/mobile and console players, with only 26% of gamers using only PC or mobile devices and not consoles. It can be seen that with the help of the PC as a springboard, it has become an obvious opportunity for consoles and mobile game players to convert each other. For such an opportunity to expand the player base, domestic manufacturers will naturally not let go, and Tencent, as a giant, is even more responsible. Tencent's games presented a combination of old and new. On the one hand, Tencent is the most familiar and best at IP cooperative development projects. Representative products such as Age of Empires Mobile, which has won Microsoft's "Age of Empires" IP, and Command & Conquer: Legions, which has won EA's "Command & Conquer" IP, both products are SLG categories and are also aimed at IP fan audiences. There are also projects related to IP, such as Dune: Awakening developed by Funcom, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 developed by Fatshark, and so on. Among them, "Dune: Awakening" is a survival MMO category product developed based on the "Dune" IP. Reminiscent of the grand scenes in the previous "Dune" movies, it is true that only PC-oriented open-world products can carry such a worldview. In response to fan expectations, the game development standards have also been met to the highest standards, and it has been nominated for several awards at this Cologne. In addition to these games developed around IP, Level Infinite also brought several self-developed key products. The characteristic of these products is that they are no longer the only core of the mobile terminal, but the goal of multi-terminal simultaneous distribution, respectively, the mobile terminal and the PC/console terminal are developed products, and the PC terminal has become the focus of the exhibition content. The representative products of this line of thinking are "Operation Delta" and "Dark Zone Breakout: Infinite" on the shooting track. "Operation Delta" seems to be a typical Tencent stable project: get the classic IP, develop it simultaneously on multiple terminals, and launch it globally. However, the game has shown a different temperament from the beginning of the exposure, the production team has invested much more resources on the PC than expected, and the game has also expanded from the relatively thin content at the time of the first exposure to the three modes and multiple gameplay. According to producer Leo at the Cologne show, the cost of making one Delta Action is equivalent to making two or three shooting games at the same time. On top of that, Operation Delta also wants to challenge a new business model: that is, to budget the cost of making a single-player/console game to make a free service game. It will be a new experience for European and American players. For many years, console gamers in Europe and the United States have been accustomed to paying for a game on a buyout basis, spending $60 at once to buy a game and play it for a year. However, the drawbacks of this payment model have emerged. On the one hand, the manufacturer found that the unit price of $60 could no longer support itself to provide continuous service to players for a whole year. In order to control costs, manufacturers even cut the game's stand-alone plot and other modes, adding treasure chests, passes, and microtransactions to expand revenue. On the other hand, players are also suffering from the fact that there is less and less playable content for the same expenditure, and they are even more struggling to collect money after the manufacturer has to do everything possible to collect money after a one-time charge. There are countless contradictions that have erupted as a result, not to mention that there are manufacturers who dare to go online with semi-finished products, which not only loses their reputation but also hurts players. After games such as "Battlefield 2042" overturned, European and American shooters have actually entered a period of weakness in the past two years. And such an opportunity is an opportunity for domestic manufacturers, especially after Tencent has occupied the ecological niche of shooting mobile games, and has a strong willingness to open up a battlefield on the PC/console side. "Operation Delta" is more focused on PC-first development ideas, which is probably born in this context. From the feedback of players at the Cologne exhibition, it can also be felt that European and American players have a lot of expectations for this game. This is not only because the IP of "Delta" is well-known enough among overseas old-school players, but also because the game does come up with enough rich content. The game is stuffed with plot content that can be experienced independently, and the battle of the battlefield is combined with the current popular gold evacuation gameplay, and the quality of the graphics and shooting feel is also guaranteed to be on par with the console game: and such a game can be played with zero krypton. It's a bit subversive. For Tencent, Operation Delta is a test of the waters. Let's see if turning everything that used to be "charged" into free can attract players; Let's also see if when players get rid of the buyout system of one-shot trading, they can release higher consumption potential and support the continuous operation of free-to-play games. In fact, the answer to this question has been there for a long time. If you want to make a service-based game return on investment, the best solution is to expand the user scale. With enough users, the game can still be updated with high-quality content, even if most players don't pay or only pay a small amount. Tencent's other key IP "Dark Zone Breakout" shows us this possibility. Two years ago, when the mobile game "Dark Zone Breakout" was launched on the national server, the withdrawal of gold was still a niche category with a high threshold, and some people even asserted that this model must have a high threshold of "buyout payment" to maintain the game's economic system from collapsing. However, two years later, the mobile game "Dark Zone Breakout" has proved to the outside world with its best-selling list results and 150 million registered users around the world that there is still a lot to be done to make a zero-threshold service game with a gold withdrawal. Now, Arena Breakout: Infinite, which is on the Cologne booth, wants to make this IP blossom on the PC side as well. Before participating in the Cologne exhibition, "Dark Zone Breakout: Infinite" has been tested on a small scale overseas, attracting the attention of many overseas shooting streamers. The game is not simply a mobile version of the game to the PC platform and runs on an emulator, but a new product that has all the resources remastered in HD and tailored for the PC platform. In the interview, the producer also said that European and American players have higher expectations for a shooter game on the PC platform. Players don't care if you are taking care of different platforms with different performances, they just look at whether the game's graphics quality and details are full, whether it runs smoothly, and whether the feedback of the action is timely. In order to respond to the high demands of players, the production team based on the PC/console platform when the project was established, and after getting rid of the hardware limitations of the mobile terminal, the game has significantly improved in terms of picture quality, light and shadow details, and scene interaction. For the game type of gold evacuation, players will wander around the same map for a long time, so that each game will not become a fixed process of brushing, taking treasures, and evacuating, and the details are very important. In order to improve the details, it is necessary to improve the quality of the scene, so that the scene can be completely destroyed, so that every change in grass and trees can be perceived by players. And that's where Infinity spends the most time. From "Operation Delta" to "Dark Zone Breakout: Infinite", we can feel Tencent's unprecedented emphasis on PC gamers. Shooting games, especially first-person shooting games, have always been a category dominated by European and American manufacturers, not to mention Chinese manufacturers, even Japan manufacturers rarely have products that can challenge Europe and the United States on this track. Over the past few years, however, this stereotype has been disintegrating. From PUBGM to Call of Duty M, Tencent has validated the business model of shooter mobile games. Now, Tencent is ready to storm the last bastion of the shooting track, trying to win over the most hardcore shooting gamers in Europe and the United States. Tencent's goal is not just to make a commercially successful money-making game, but to go one step further and build its own brand reputation.

To subvert, it is not only the game Chinese manufacturers that have been playing the role of "workers" overseas, but at the Cologne exhibition in the past two years, we can feel that domestic manufacturers no longer want to play the role assigned to them by the script. Domestic games, ostensibly a small explosion of PC products, are essentially trying to re-slice the pie. However, if they want to re-divide the cake and re-define the rules, manufacturers are not only facing competition at the product level, but also facing various challenges. The traditional business model dominated by European and American manufacturers, hidden under the software sales, is also the hardware manufacturers who also benefit. For example, the hot sale of "Black Myth" has promoted the sales of PS5 in China in disguise, and many of the game's domestic publicity and distribution activities have also involved hardware manufacturers such as graphics cards. It is only natural that high-quality games will promote hardware sales, and software and hardware are a community of interests. It can even be said that one of the reasons for the birth of traditional game exhibitions represented by E3 is that hardware manufacturers also need a stage for advertising. But now, this sales model of software and hardware binding has reached a bottleneck. The buyout system itself is not a problem, the problem is that someone parasitizes and sucks blood in the name of a buyout, and kidnaps the player and kidnaps the developer. When the original cake is divided, no one will easily give up the ready-made interests. And capital only wants to squeeze developers, but has no intention of making the cake bigger. In this context, what Chinese manufacturers want to do is not to subvert the buyout system, but to try to unbind players and give developers more choices based on their own experience in the Internet era. High-standard service games, long-term operation games, and so on are all an attempt. Of course, there is no diamond, no porcelain work. If you want to subvert the tradition, the first step is to come up with a bright enough product, and only with the product can you talk about changing your life. Only by coming up with products that benchmark the first line can domestic manufacturers impress players with their products, and finally players vote with their feet to decide the future direction. Stereotypes will be broken, and the future will be hidden within.

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