With the reemergence of mini and hypercasual games both in the West and the East, a lot of people might be wondering if there were more platforms than just the Google and Apple app stores.
Luckily there are a lot of places that are accepting these types of games, and Cocos Creator is helping by creating the tools you’ll need to have your game properly exported for these places.
We would like to share with you a list of 8 different places you can place your mini game or hypercasual game worldwide:
- Facebook Instant Games
- WeChat Mini Game
- OPPO Game
- vivo Game
- Huawei Fast Game
- Xiaomi Game
- Taobao Game
- Toutiao Game
Facebook Instant Games
The great thing about this platform is the requirements for qualification are not as strict as others on this list. But, with the emergence of more and more games on the platform, competition is intensifying.
According to Statista data, 2018 Q2 Facebook global monthly users are 2.234 billion, and Messenger's September 2017, monthly users have exceeded 1.3 billion. This is undoubtedly a massive amount of traffic, making Facebook's attributes very reliable.
Facebook Instant Games currently offers two ways to monetize your game: Both in-app purchases and ads. Ads can be video, banner, and a fun new playable version.
Cocos' data shows that there are over 4,000 games on the Facebook Instant Games platform. Many games have been successfully entering the Facebook Instant Games platform and are getting good results. The Facebook Instant Games platform has no restrictions on the type and theme of the game. Developers can register themselves, submit games, and go online directly through platform review.
Publish Cocos Creator games to Facebook Instant Games:
https://docs.cocos.com/creator/manual/en/publish/publish-fb-instant-games.html
Facebook Instant Games Information:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/games/instant-games
WeChat Mini Game
WeChat Mini Game has more than 2,000 games connected, with more than 310 million users and more than 10 million DAUs. At present, WeChat Mini Game supports two types of monetization, in-app purchases, and ads from traffic sources.
The gender distribution in WeChat Mini Game is relatively balanced, as the ratio of male to female is 50-50. There is also a trend that users are over 25 years of age.
Get a running start!
In order to discover high-quality creative games and encourage developers to cultivate and polish new game ideas, WeChat Mini Game launched significant incentives for highly qualified games. WeChat asks that any mini game with high innovation in gameplay, art, plot, and music can apply for and after professional review, an opportunity to get a creative game certification.
In addition to having a unique tag on your app image, WeChat will also provide marketing to gain some initial users for the product, helping game developers to start smoothly in the early stages, and splitting the share of the internal purchase and advertising with the developer.
Developers who feel that they meet the application criteria may wish to apply, but need to prepare the following qualifications and supporting materials:
- Game version approval
- "Network Game Record Information"
- "Self-review report of the game"
- Computer Software Copyright Registration Certificate
- Power of Attorney (if any)
You can get more information and the application and appeal guidelines here:
Https://game.weixin.qq.com/cgi-bin/h5/static/minigame/creative/guidelines.html
What qualifications are required to publish WeChat Mini Game?
The qualifications required by businesses and individuals are different. But we highly recommend that you find a business partner within China to help you get your game into WeChat. If you still would like to try, here are the requirements:
Personal qualifications are required to submit:
- Computer Software Copyright Registration Certificate
- "Self-review report of the game"
Non-personal qualifications are required to submit:
- SARFT version approval
- Ministry of Culture Filing Information
- Computer Software Copyright Registration Certificate
- "Self-review report of the game"
Here are a few links to help you get your game into the WeChat Mini Game library:
Mini Game qualification submission review guidelines (Chinese):
https://developers.weixin.qq.com/community/develop/doc/00004455a34458355496d601b5b808
WeChat Mini Game access guide (Chinese):
https://developers.weixin.qq.com/minigame/introduction/guide.html
WeChat Mini Game development guide (Chinese):
https://developers.weixin.qq.com/minigame/dev/index.html?t=18111602
Publish games to WeChat Mini Game through Cococs Creator:
https://docs.cocos.com/creator/manual/en/publish/publish-wechatgame.html
OPPO Game
OPPO Game last year had more than 20 million users. Among the products that have already been launched, two games, "Express Brother" and "Travel," have been officially released and the daily users are over 500,000 in their first few days.
At present, OPPO Game mainly has games in the form of time management, casual puzzles, and elimination games. Developers are recommended to view many of the games in the store to get an overall feel of the types of games accepted into the service.
The OPPO game platform provides developers with a monetization model based on in-app purchase and advertising. In terms of in-app purchase, the OPPO hardcore game “Qingdao Q Edition” has a current ARPU value of 0.1 RMB.
In casual games, the overall revenue is relatively high. The Three Kingdoms series has an ARPU of 0.5 yuan, which is a considerable amount in China’s game industry. In terms of advertising, the OPPO review is rigorous, so please follow them carefully.
Monetization is divided into two ways:
1) In-game purchase: OPPO game in-house purchase is divided into levels: After deducting a channel fee of 5%, games making less than 100,000 RMB, the developer gets 100%, 100,000 or more, and the developer gets 60%;
2) Advertising monetization: Developers can get a 70% advertising revenue sharing policy.
The OPPO game's package needs to be within 10 MB and does not support packet access, but developers can load network assets. Also, the OPPO mini-game startup load time cannot exceed 5 seconds.
Since version 2.0.5, developers can publish games to the OPPO mini-game platform with Cocos Creator, and the existing content can be released seamlessly, which dramatically reduces the cost of developers developing new mini-games.
What qualification documents are needed?
The OPPO mini-game platform does not currently support access for hobbyists. Game companies must provide the following qualifications:
- Computer Software Copyright Registration Certificate
- "Self-review report of the game"
- SARFT version approval
- Ministry of Culture Filing Information
OPPO Game access instructions, development guide, advertising access (Chinese):
https://open.oppomobile.com/wiki/doc#id=10308
Publish the game to the OPPO Game platform:
Https://docs.cocos.com/creator/manual/en/publish/publish-oppo-instant-games.html
Contact us for information on how to get your game onto the service.
vivo Game
The vivo browser and the store is close to 200 million monthly users, and the monthly activity of the game center is close to 100 million. The support of a variety of products makes vivo a high-quality distribution platform in China.
According to the data shared by the WeChat Mini Game open class event, 37% of the service are active users, 41% are casual game users, and 22% are non-game users.
At the end of September 2018, vivo had put the entire game center into all the vivo phones. As of October last year, the number of vivo games has exceeded 100. According to vivo, the overseas version of the vivo Game will open up the international market outside China.
Most vivo Game users are aged 22-36 with men accounting for most of the gamers. They are into pop culture and trying out new things. The most prominent performers are elimination, shooting, Chinese chess, and adventure games. vivo mainly focuses on single-player games that have some sort of adventure and puzzle to them.
In terms of monetization, vivo game provides two ways of advertising，the in-app purchases and the advertising system. According to our contacts, the ad network should be available soon and has access to 100 game products with a monthly exposure of more than 500 million views.
All casual and hyper-casual games need to be tested by email. vivo checks to see if there is no similar product in the store, and a check to see if the game is of high quality. After the review is passed, you can go online with your game.
Since version 2.0.5, developers can quickly release games to the vivo game platform through Cocos Creator, and fast developers can get done it in less than 2 hours!
What qualification documents are needed?
- Must have software copyright
- Mid-core and hardcore game products need to provide the official version number
vivo Game platform access (registration, parameter acquisition, account access, payment access, etc.) (Chinese):
https://dev.vivo.com.cn/documentCenter/doc/142
Release the game to the vivo Game platform (Chinese):
https://docs.cocos.com/creator/manual/zh/publish/publish-vivo-instant-games.html
Contact us for more information.
Huawei Fast Game
Huawei Fast Game released on January 1st, the Quick Game related documentation has already available in the Huawei Mobile Services backend.
Release the game to Huawei Express Game Platform:
Cocos Creator is already integrating the publishing tools, and Cocos Creator will also provide release support as soon as we can.
What qualification documents are needed?
When applying for the first time for the "Huawei Application Market," you need to prepare relevant qualification documents, including:
- Game copyright
- Game version number
- Game record
Huawei Fast Game Development Guide (Chinese):
https://wo.hicloud.com/dsm/hms/cn/catalog/fastgame.html?page=fastapp_fastgame_devguide
Contact us for information and business contacts.
Xiaomi Game
Xiaomi will also have their own market for hypercasual and mini games in the future. Similar to Huawei, we don’t have a lot of information, but will be working on implementing it with Cocos Creator.
What qualification documents are needed?
- Version number approval
- Software copyright registration certificate
- Network culture business license
- Value-added telecommunications business license
Xiaomi HTML5 game platform registration (Chinese):
https://dev.mi.com/console/doc/
If you are interested, contact us for more information.
Taobao Game
Taobao's mini game platform inside the Taobao app is a fixed traffic portal. Players can only receive coupons for merchandise by playing your games or can click on ads. This platform is great for increasing your user's usage time and stickiness, but not usually a great place for monetization. It can be seen that Alibaba is trying various ways to find traffic.
From the "Travel Frog" introduced in April last year, there are over 30 mini games on the Taobao game platform, mainly classic mobile games or hypercasual. Taobao games claim that they encourage developers to submit game content mainly targeting puzzle, casual and health.
For monetization, if a user receives a discount on a product, goes to the shop, and completes the transaction, or uses the product coupons obtained in the game to complete the transaction, the developer gets rewarded. The second is advertising clicks, the third form is unique, called Sponsored games. Taobao will customize individual exclusive games for different brands or businesses according to their needs. There may be more models in the future.
If you are interested, contact us for more information.
Toutiao Game
According to a report last year, news app, Toutiao, has already started their beta for a gaming platform. Unlike the WeChat game ecosystem, Toutiao will enable small games to have an intuitive traffic portal.
Toutiao Game developer information (Chinese):
https://developer.toutiao.com/docs/intro/env.html
Toutiao Game development guide (Chinese):
https://developer.toutiao.com/docs/game/
If you are interested, contact us for more information.
Though we only gave you the biggest, there are a few more such as Baidu Game, 4399 online games, etc. that developers can pay attention to exploring. Many of these game networks are already built into Cocos Creator, allowing you just to change one setting and have your game ready for launch.
So if you are looking to start building the next big game that is played worldwide, look into the few platforms available in China and beyond.
