As a heavy investor in mobile games, CooTek recently announced its long-term plan to build a metaverse, integrating its advantages in mobile games and online literature along with supports from multiple sources. Lejiu, a Shanghai-based game studio invested by CooTek, has initiated the development of a metaverse game, targeting female users.
In May 2021, CooTek invested in Lejiu, which has created a series of popular games such as “Xian Zui Cang Qiong.” Lejiu’s gaming design style is matched with CooTek’s online novel and IP business. Based on Lejiu’s core competency and CooTek’s forward-looking strategy, Lejiu will initiate CooTek’s metaverse plan by introducing a female-targeted semi-open adventure virtual game (AVG). AVG provides users with an immersive experience, allowing users to interact with other players in an exotic and multi-dimensional world, while single-player mode is also accessible for users. Before metaverse related hardware become prevalent, this game can accumulate many cornerstone metaverse users. Given rich experience in 3D game development, Lejiu will be a key contributor to the creation of the CooTek metaverse.
While exploring the game-based metaverse, female players tend to build their virtual life through making friends and having trade transactions, which largely merges with their real-world experience. For example, users can upload their own works as home decoration, which will be traded as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the game. For those players who have a large fan base, they can earn income for real money by developing co-branding goods and products with other merchants. As female audience typically have stronger inclination in sharing, expressing and shopping, the diverse set of scenarios will be created based on these needs in the metaverse. Similar to the real-world, female will be likely to carry more business potential in the virtual world as well.
The female gaming market: the right people, in the right place, at the right time
The Company believes targeting the female market is a smart move in the first step of building the metaverse. Data have shown that there are currently 1.2 billion female game players worldwide, representing 45 per cent of the market. In fact, the days when games were mostly dominated by male players has changed. With PC games gradually being replaced by mobile ones, female users have been increased significantly year over year, taking up nearly half of the entire market. Many competitive and role-playing games popular among female users are now topping the game charts. For long, the female audience were relying on online novels or TV series to meet their emotional, recreational and social needs. With the emergence of beginner-friendly mobile games, more women have turned to mobile games as their main entertainment. Therefore, it could not be a better time for CooTek to create a female-oriented metaverse.
The competitive advantages of CooTek in online literature and games also played important parts in creating the metaverse. In the mobile game arena, CooTek has been focusing on the causal game market while churning out dozens of products. This allows the Company to take full advantage of its strength in terms of resource reutilization, localization, optimization, and ROI growth. Among the extensive range of lightweight and fast mobile games developed by studios invested by CooTek, several female-oriented dress-up games, such as Catwalk Beauty and Truth Runner, have become global hits. The Company has acquired a solid base of female gamers worldwide and developed a unique understanding of female-oriented games. At the same time, the rich content and adventure storylines offered by CooTek’s online literature platform will further capture the attention of female users. The combination of the flexible gameplays with intriguing stories will maximize the company’s solid advantages.
Some recent events in the market have shown that the female-oriented metaverse is heating up. Supported by its unique advantages and the success stories in the market, CooTek’s female-oriented metaverse is going to open up a whole new world of possibilities and imaginations.