Open world games initially have meta cosmic elements, or represent the development trend of game form
Open world games are the combination of top technology and design. Through continuous development and evolution, open world games have become the top category in the field of PC and host, and gradually expand from host and PC to mobile phone, or become the main trend of mobile games in the future. The advantage of Open World Games lies in the strong integration of playing methods, which can meet the needs of multiple users and improve the scale of game users. At the same time, the UGC content production mode under open world games can greatly improve the production efficiency and richness of game content and prolong the game life cycle. From the perspective of specific categories, open World RPG and sandbox games are two important directions. In addition, open world games continue to explore the construction and experience of the virtual world, and have initially possessed the meta cosmic elements of identity, social interaction, immersion, anytime and anywhere. The realization mode of open world games is from pay to play to pay to win, then pay for love, and then to the diversified realization of sandbox game UGC platform. The business model is gradually mature, or provides inspiration for the commercialization of metauniverse. As a product form close to the meta universe architecture, opening the world game market may benefit from the accelerated investment layout of technology giants and game manufacturers.
The open world game market space may reach tens of billions, and the engine, design and IP building ability may be the key to win
Based on the neutral hypothesis, we estimate that the scale of China’s open world mobile game market may reach 44.832 billion yuan in 2025, and the compound growth rate from 2021 to 2025 will be about 51.75%, with broad growth space. In the development of open world games, the ability of game engine, game design and IP creation may be the key to win: game engine is one of the important underlying technologies to build the industrial production system of games, and determines the performance level of open world games; Game design is the key to determine the core experience of the game; IP is not only the creative source of open world game design, but also an important means of commercialization.
Learning from the experience of overseas chain games, “NFT + Games” may further enlarge the scale of China’s opening up of the world game market
Driven by the p2e (playtoearn) model, the current game has become an important application direction for the implementation of blockchain technology. The scale of blockchain game users is growing rapidly and the future revenue scale is considerable. We expect the global market revenue scale to reach 10 billion US dollars in 2024. Combined with the current regulatory environment in China, we judge that through the combination of NFT and game or game IP, we can endow NFT with more cultural value and IP attributes, enlarge the value of game IP and improve the willingness and scale of users to pay. The introduction of NFT in the game is also conducive to maintaining the stability of the economic system in the game and prolonging the life cycle of the game.
It is suggested to lay out the head game developers and head game engine developers with outstanding IP building ability
We believe that head game R & D companies with advantages in platform, capital, technology and talent reserve may benefit from the rapid growth of the open world game market. We mainly recommend Perfect World Co.Ltd(002624) and heart companies, including Tencent holdings, netease-s and roblox. The combination of NFT and game IP can effectively improve the game payment rate and scale, and the benefit targets include Zhejiang Jinke Tom Culture Industry Co.Ltd(300459) . As a provider of underlying infrastructure for 3D content R & D, game engine companies may directly benefit from the increased engine demand brought about by the rapid development of open world games, including unity software.
Risk tip: the development of game engine technology may be less than expected and regulatory risks.
