01 字节跳动加码进军游戏领域

字节跳动据报道斥资40亿美元买下沐瞳科技，拟将业务扩展到视频app以外，叫板世界最大游戏公司腾讯。

全文共667个词，by Yuan Yang in Beijing

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is on a spending spree to expand beyond its blockbuster video app into gaming, where it is taking on the world’s largest gaming company, Tencent.

TikTok的母公司字节跳动（ByteDance）正在大举支出，拟将业务扩展到其热门视频app以外，进军游戏领域，叫板世界最大游戏公司腾讯（Tencent）。

ByteDance began buying up small gaming companies in 2017, but on Monday it paid a reported $4bn to buy Moonton, a Shanghai-based studio set up by a former Tencent staffer, giving it a tent-pole franchise, Mobile Legends.

字节跳动从2017年开始收购小型游戏公司，但在本周一，它据报道斥资40亿美元买下由腾讯前员工在上海成立的游戏公司沐瞳科技（Moonton），使其拥有一个支柱游戏品牌：《无尽对决》（Mobile Legends）。

The company has also been trying to poach developers from rivals, offering them salary increases of 30-50 per cent, according to three games developers at Tencent and NetEase, who added that most of their colleagues had also been approached by headhunters for ByteDance over the past two years.

据腾讯和网易（NetEase）的三名游戏开发者称，该公司还在试图从竞争对手那里挖走开发者，向这些人才提供30%至50%的加薪。这些人补充说，过去两年期间，为字节跳动工作的猎头公司也接触过他们的大部分同事。

“These will be Bytedance’s most important one to two years to decide the outcome of their gaming strategy. If they can’t do it now, they never will,” said Liao Xuhua, online entertainment sector analyst at Analysys, who added that the company faces the challenge of building a strong enough reputation to draw the best talent and gaming partners.

“未来一两年对于决定字节跳动游戏战略的成败将是最重要的。如果他们现在不能成功，他们将永远成功不了，”易观（Analysys）在线娱乐行业分析师廖旭华表示。他补充说，该公司面临的挑战是建立足够强大的声誉，以吸引最优秀人才和游戏合作伙伴。

The push into gaming comes as ByteDance starts to try to diversify away from advertising. Through Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, ByteDance has already won 27 per cent of China’s advertising market, according to Founder Securities, which estimates its Rmb116bn （$17.7bn） ad revenues in 2019 came second only to those of Alibaba.

进军游戏领域之际，字节跳动开始尝试业务多元化，减轻对广告的依赖。方正证券（Founder Securities）的数据显示，借助TikTok的中文版抖音，字节跳动已经拿下中国广告市场的27%。方正证券估计，字节跳动1160亿元人民币（合177亿美元）的2019年广告营收仅次于阿里巴巴（Alibaba）。

As advertising growth slows, ByteDance now needs to add more business lines, said analysts.

分析师们表示，随着广告业务增长放缓，字节跳动现在需要增添更多业务线。

“ByteDance is very similar to Tencent: they have many apps drawing huge user traffic, but they need to find a way to monetise the traffic. That means more adverts, gaming and virtual products, or ecommerce. Advertising has been consolidated: they need to find something else,” said Zhang Hua, associate professor of finance at China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.

“字节跳动与腾讯非常相似：他们拥有许多app，吸引着巨大的用户流量，但他们需要找到一种方法来借助这种流量获利。这意味着更多的广告、游戏和虚拟产品，或者电子商务。广告业务已经得到了巩固：他们需要找到其他东西，”中欧国际工商学院（CEIBS）金融学副教授张华表示。

Expanding into gaming is also a way of hitting back at Tencent, whose dominance of China’s gaming market has restricted ByteDance’s social-media platforms by stopping them from broadcasting shows featuring games under Tencent’s empire. That is a big problem when one of the world’s most popular mobile games, Tencent’s Honor of Kings, can draw 180m viewers for a tournament finale.

扩张进入游戏领域也是回击腾讯的一种方式，后者在中国游戏市场的主导地位制约着字节跳动的社交媒体平台，比如阻止其直播腾讯旗下游戏。当世界上最流行的手游之一、腾讯的《王者荣耀》（Honor of Kings）可以吸引1.8亿观众观看职业联赛的决赛时，这是一个大问题。

Without the legacy of a strong in-house game development unit, ByteDance has to expand by persuading others to partner with it, and publishing third-party games. Its gaming teams were mostly poached from Tencent, NetEase and Beijing-based game developer Perfect World, whose senior director is now head of ByteDance’s Beijing games studio.

由于没有现成的强大内部游戏开发部门，字节跳动为了扩张，不得不说服其他公司与之合作，并发布第三方游戏。其游戏团队的人才大多从腾讯、网易以及北京游戏开发商完美世界（Perfect World）挖来；完美世界的高级总监现在是字节跳动北京游戏工作室的负责人。

As well as high base salaries, ByteDance has plenty to offer recruits. Its social-media apps, Today’s Headlines and Douyin, draw the most user-hours of all China’s apps. In the first half of 2020, these two apps’ users spent roughly 73 minutes on each app every day, according to TalkingData, and can supply many adverts to drive user traffic to its games.

除了高底薪外，字节跳动还可以向人才提供很多激励。其社交媒体app——今日头条和抖音——在中国所有app中吸引到最多的用户时间。据TalkingData称，2020年上半年，这两款app的用户每天在每个app上花费大约73分钟时间，并且这两款app可以提供许多广告来吸引用户访问其游戏。

But although this creates a rapid influx of users, attrition is also high.

但是，尽管这会带来快速涌入的用户，流失率也很高。

Retaining users depends on the content of the game, and creating good content relies on well co-ordinated teams who have a “common understanding of how to create”, said Liao.

易观的廖旭华表示，留住用户取决于游戏的内容，而创造好的内容有赖于协作良好的团队，大家对“如何创造有共同的理解”。

“It’s not an industry where you can just take all the best employees from other companies and make a great game,” Liao said.

“在这个行业，你不能只靠挖来其他公司的所有优秀员工，就开发出一流的游戏，”廖旭华表示。

Would-be recruits also share these reservations about ByteDance’s so-far unproven strategy in gaming. While a high ByteDance base salary looks flashy, remuneration in the industry is heavily reliant on year-end bonuses of up to 10-months’ pay, which rely on games’ success.

潜在的人才也表示对字节跳动迄今未经验证的游戏战略持保留态度。尽管字节跳动的高底薪看上去亮眼，但该行业的薪酬在很大程度上依赖于可能高达10个月工资的年终奖金，而这取决于游戏的成功。

“They’ve been in the industry for a few years, but they’ve not achieved results in the ‘heavyweight’gaming category,” said one former Tencent games employee, referring to the high-spend, high-user time category of multiplayer arena-style battle games.

“他们进入这个行业已经有几年了，但他们在‘重量级’游戏品类未能拿出成果，”腾讯游戏部门的一名前员工表示。他指的是竞技场风格的多人战斗游戏，这是一个高消费、高用户时间的品类。

However, analysts and game developers said that the fragmentation of the gaming market gives ByteDance many niches to grow: casual games with lower time-spend, open-world games that the user can explore at a leisurely pace as opposed to battle games, and games aimed at the under-tapped female market.

然而，分析师和游戏开发者表示，游戏市场的碎片化为字节跳动带来了许多利基发展空间：时间花费较低的休闲游戏；开放世界游戏，用户可以悠闲地探索，而不像战斗游戏那样紧张；以及瞄准开发不足的女性市场的游戏。

“Their biggest challenge is not the market or the competitors, but their own patience. Alibaba took over seven years to produce a few good games,” added Liao. For a company used to explosive growth within a few years, ByteDance will have to shift gears in gaming.

“他们最大的挑战并不是市场或竞争对手，而是他们自己的耐心。阿里巴巴用了七年多时间制作出几款优秀的游戏，”廖旭华补充说。对于一家习惯于在几年内实现爆炸式增长的公司，字节跳动将不得不在游戏领域“换挡”。