Shi Yuzhu's programmer vision,

It's still old and spicy.

Giant Network, which is making efforts in mini program games, has gained a good report card in the first half of this year.

On August 29, Giant Network released its 2024 semi-annual report.

During the reporting period, the company achieved revenue of 1.427 billion yuan, net profit attributable to the parent company of 718 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.16%, and planned to distribute cash dividends of 1.40 yuan for every 10 shares to all shareholders, with a cash dividend of 265 million yuan.

Among them, the turnover of the newly launched mini game "King's Journey" launched by Giant Network has increased month-on-month for 5 consecutive months after its launch, showing new growth vitality.

In addition, a number of mini games have also been launched or entered the testing stage in the company's "Journey" IP track.

At the same time, it is not difficult to find through the financial report that Giant Network is currently highly dependent on the two IPs of "Journey" and "Ball Battle" in terms of revenue.

Giant Network said in its semi-annual report that the company's two main product lines are the "Journey" series and the "Ball Battle".

The in-app purchase system of "free games, paid props" pioneered by "Journey" has profoundly affected the Chinese game industry, so that the in-app purchase system has become the most common form of payment for domestic games.

As an important chapter in the history of online games in China, the "Journey" IP has a huge user base.

Judging from the content of the semi-annual report, Giant Network has built the journey IP matrix of "Journey", "Journey 2", "Green Journey" and "Journey Nostalgic Edition".

During the reporting period, in the era of mobile online games, the main products of the "Journey" series include the "Journey" mobile game exclusively represented by Tencent, the self-developed and self-published "Journey 2" mobile game, and the "Original Journey" mobile game officially launched in March 2023.

Judging from the financial report, in the first half of 2024, the revenue of Giant's "mobile online games" will be 1.069 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.11%, accounting for 74.89% of the total revenue; The revenue of online games on the computer side was 338 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 22.11%, accounting for 23.69% of the total revenue.

In addition, the development of AI is also a new way of playing for Giant Network.

Giant Network's other casual party game, "Space Kill", continues to cultivate the domestic market, and this summer launched a joint version of Ultraman IP and the "AI Endgame Challenge" gameplay, constantly innovating the game experience

"Super Sus", as the overseas version of "Space Kill", topped the game list in many regions in the first half of this year.

It is not difficult to see from the innovative gameplay of the game that the current Giant Network is laying out "game + AI". Among them, the "AI Endgame Challenge" gameplay, which is launched in the mode of "1 real player + N AI players", is the first AI native gameplay based on a multi-agent large model in the game industry.

In the first half of this year, Giant Network's AI lab also developed the first TTS (speech synthesis technology) model Bailing-TTS that supports a variety of Mandarin and dialect mixtures.

What difficulties will Giant encounter if he deeply cultivates mini games in the future?

Will there be a problem with over-reliance on the two IPs of "Journey" and "Ball Battle"?

How is the game applied in AI, and are players buying it?

As a casual game, "Ball Battle" has been around for a year, can it continue to PK with party games?

In this regard, Li Yutong, a reporter from the Daily Economic News, had an exchange with Shule, and the monkey thought:

Shi Yuzhu's programmer vision is still old and spicy.

The Journey Mini Game is essentially a derivative of the previous terminal games in a state where they have been able to be gamified.

Just as terminal games ten years ago were often able to be gamified on the web five years ago, the improvement of technology has allowed mini games to carry more content, and the "transplantation" of giants lies in this.

For the current casual game style of small games, such transplantation by large manufacturers has a certain dimensionality reduction effect.

However, it is not enough to open the mini game market by transplanting past games, and it is also necessary to redevelop a series of gameplay experiences according to the characteristics of mini games in order to break the game.

Just like the transplantation of terminal games to mobile games in the past, most of them have mediocre performance and require secondary creation, or even new research and development carrying IP.

Games, cloud games, and console games are all fields where giants can exert their strength, and have already laid out and achieved certain results.

Let the two big IPs with considerable market appeal Journey and Qiuqiu Battle derive more types of products.

In particular, the influence of the ball battle in the field of casual games can follow the channel opened by "Egg Boy Party" and find more opportunities in the field of UGC games.

In addition, in the field of AI+ games, Giant is a game company with an earlier layout in China.

The current space killing AI gameplay mainly focuses on the player's experience.

Other companies' products, such as Honor of Kings, have long had a similar style of play, which can be an auxiliary tool for players to improve their own game level.

The key to whether Giant Network can find a breakthrough in AI is how to reduce costs and increase efficiency in the application of AIGC, and make artificial intelligence a companion for players in games.

At the same time, game companies may also explore the field of casual game UGC, so that artificial intelligence can help players build game scenes more conveniently.

These are the most practical advantages of major game manufacturers in AI applications.

The disadvantage is that there are abundant experimental scenarios, but there is indeed a generation gap between the accumulation of AI technology and that of large technology manufacturers.

Specifically, "Ball Battle" has its own characteristics, but it is not the direction of user-created content.

Online games can be upgraded or iterated in nature, and it is not a problem to form a transformation, the key is whether the brain hole is big enough and whether the tools are good or not.

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