I just said goodbye to the fierce summer file, but I didn't expect the SLG track to fight again.

Today, the iOS best-selling list shows that three of the top 10 lists have been occupied by the SLG category, namely "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World" in fifth place, "Three Kingdoms· Strategic Edition" in sixth place, and "Endless Winter" in seventh place.

This is a rare phenomenon - according to past experience, it is rare to see more than two products of the same type appear at the same time in the top 10 best-selling lists, let alone a category like SLG, which has a serious overlap of users and a significant head effect.

In other words, after choosing one of the SLG products, users will not easily play two products at the same time unless they abandon the pit, and user loyalty is very high.

However, in this situation, it seems that the past perception is about to be broken.

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There is a view that the current SLG market is showing a peaceful scene, which may be related to the different distribution strategies adopted by various manufacturers.

Since the beginning of the year, many blockbuster products have emerged on the SLG track. In addition to the above, there are also "World Qiyuan", "Heroes of Might and Magic: Lords of Lords", "The Lord of the Rings: Strife", "Heroes of the Three Kingdoms: Heroes of the Three Kingdoms", "Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons" and so on, the number is far more than in the past few years.

Moreover, observe the big manufacturers behind these products, Tencent, NetEase, Lilith, Sanqi, and Diandian Interactive...... Basically, almost all the big factories you can think of to do SLG are included, so you can imagine how fierce the competition is.

But if you look at the distribution strategies of different vendors, you can see that the target groups they target are not so overlapping.

Take the interactive "Endless Winter" as an example. This product has exploded in overseas markets long before its return. After returning to the domestic market this year, Diandian Interactive did not choose to stumble on the native APP market, but launched the mini game platform at the same time, which made the game have a wider range of acquisition.

In terms of distribution strategy, "Endless Winter" usually adopts sub-gameplay as a promotional point to attract a large number of pan-users to enter the game, and then screens it through SLG gameplay, so as to obtain a lower customer acquisition cost than similar competing products, and convert a large number of pan-users into SLG users.

Sub-play "Cut the Cake"

The market performance also confirms the viability of the distribution strategy of "Endless Winter". Since the launch of "Endless Winter" on the national server, it has achieved good performance in both the APP market and the mini game platform, not only ranking in the top 10 of the domestic best-selling list, but also ranking first on the best-selling list of mini games for four consecutive months.

The distribution strategy of "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World" is also similar to that of "Endless Winter", and the target users are also not the original group of core SLG users who have been occupied by old products, but young people who have never played SLG, or light users who are willing to try but are persuaded to quit by too heavy content.

Judging from the amount of materials it buys, the publicity and distribution of "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World" is still focused on "reducing the liver and reducing krypton", such as emphasizing "human rights cards are not locked", "higher probability of obtaining gold", "lighter content design" and so on.

From the perspective of actual effect, "Three Kingdoms: Conquering the World" has indeed attracted a large number of young people who have no gameplay SLG or are intimidated by the heavy content framework of the previous SLG.

Although these new products are menacing, the result is that the user's plate is expanded, and the competing products take what they need, and in the end, the impact on the original core SLG user's plate is not as big as the outside world imagines. This also explains why the three competitors sit side by side in the top 10 of the list.

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Another point worth noting is that the segmentation trend of the SLG user market is more obvious.

For a long time, the domestic SLG market has basically been revolving around the theme of the Three Kingdoms, and look at the previous head products - typical such as "The Shore of the Land" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms· Strategic Edition, all of which are all background of the Three Kingdoms. And the continued success of these products has also strengthened the fascination of domestic manufacturers with the theme of the Three Kingdoms for a long time.

There was once a view that the reason why SLG products with the theme of the Three Kingdoms have been able to succeed continuously in China is due to the familiarity and yearning of the Chinese people with the "Three Kingdoms", as well as the extreme fit between the troubled times and the SLG gameplay framework.

But in fact, the success of "Endless Winter" has proven that even if the Three Kingdoms theme is aside, as long as the needs of a specific target group can be identified, it can be successful. What is reflected behind is that the SLG user market has been segmented to a certain extent.

So, how did these segments come about?

This may be due to the fact that the SLG market was too one-dimensional before. Before this year, domestic SLGs basically maintained a single situation where the gameplay was heavy on liver and krypton, and the theme was all Three Kingdoms. Although some products have made some innovations during the period, they have basically not jumped out of the strange circle of gameplay and single theme.

This situation has been going on for a long time, and it has objectively separated a large number of SLG players who want to seek a lighter experience. This just provided the premise for the emergence of a new generation of SLG that lowered the liver and reduced krypton.

Of course, although the current SLG of liver and krypton seems to be popular (at least from the player's side), in fact, this does not mean that it is a negation of the original SLG product that is heavy on liver and krypton.

In fact, one of the core aspects of SLG gameplay is wargame deduction, which is a rule that takes a long time to be satisfied.

In essence, the long-term planning and investment in the early stage is a deliberate suppression of satisfaction. Only in this way will it usher in a more violent sense of coolness when it dominates the world in the later stage. If you deliberately reduce the depth of the content, it will weaken this satisfaction. This is the same as in souls-like games.

So, while it seems that the voice of burden reduction is prevalent at the moment, the market results show that players who prefer and pay for more content are still grabbing a lot of it. In the words of some practitioners, it is really a reversal.

Manufacturers who really understand this will not blindly learn from the practices of other manufacturers because of the loud voice of some markets, but stick to their own fundamentals, which can achieve more stable market performance.

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The group photo of the three top SLGs on the same stage on the list may be a good signal for the entire SLG market - this shows that whether it is a mini game or a native APP platform; Whether it is the Three Kingdoms or other non-local themes, there is a lot of room to be tapped in the SLG track, and SLG products with different positioning can also coexist.

Even, some of the SLG category rules that were previously recognized by practitioners, such as long life cycles, may also be broken to form a new business paradigm.

After all, they are all on the mini game platform, how long can they go?

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