A mobile app with over one billion active users, WeChat has become one of the world’s biggest social networks. WeChat mini games has been showing its potential as a key business with over 310 million users. The seven-day user retention rate of some popular mini games rocketed to 45 per cent, exhibiting effective user accessibility and game feature APIs.
The social networking site provides ways to attract users through social media sharing, advertisements and redirects from mini apps to mini games. Once users try out the game, there are various features to keep them and their friends, hooked.
It has added over 30 capabilities built off its unique ecosystem such as friends’ rankings and versus matches, as well as over 200 APIs. These unleash the social capabilities of the platform as well as to bring added room for creativity and developers.
As for commercial value, WeChat helps in providing ways for traffic monetisation through in-game item purchases and advertising. Two popular mini games were showcased at the conference, including Tencent Billiards, a casual sports game which currently maintains about five million daily active users, over 10 million RMB in daily transactions from in-game item purchases and advertising, and a 30-day user retention rate of 40 per cent. This mini game’s performance stems from a constant refinement of how it integrated its unique features and quality.
It also provides full support and access to overseas developers. Some overseas industry giants have already joined the mini games ecosystem with their own creations: Google’s Guess My Sketch and Game Closure’s Linsane Hoops. Both mini games have left a big impression on the mini games community.
Google’s Guess My Sketch is characterised by its simple, creative gameplay and interactivity with friends that sparked popularity among users. Game Closure’s Linsane Hoops attracted players with an excellent friend-versus feature, optimising competition with WeChat friends in a quick and interesting way.
It’s evident that the unique features were considered during development, helping make these mini games so popular. The success of these two overseas developers provides both a reference and source of encouragement for developers who want to try it.
It also highlighted at the conference that it would strive to support overseas developers by opening access to current API and localising developer documentation to facilitate development and publishing. Additionally, it presented development procedures and noted that mini games development currently supports the industry’s common development engines, bringing clarification and convenience to overseas developers.
With the end of the conference, the social networking platform awaits for more overseas developers to join in the ever-growing platform. Together with developers, it will continue striving for growth and exploring new possibilities of the mini games ecosystem.