Rivalry between Chinese social media giants intensifies as ByteDance’s Douyin follows Tencent with mini game
- Douyin’s first in-app game looks similar to WeChat’s viral jumping title from 2017
- ByteDance and Tencent are increasingly stepping into each other’s territory to gain more users
Douyin, the viral short video app run by ByteDance, has launched its first mini game, built on top of a new feature allowing users to play games inside the app without having to download them separately.
The move will intensify social media rivalry between ByteDance and Tencent Holdings, China’s biggest games publisher, as mini games are added to apps in the battle to win over a bigger share of the country’s mercurial millennials.
Mini games were pioneered by Tencent’s WeChat, China’s answer to WhatsApp which has morphed into an all-in-one app with over one billion monthly active users who chat, play games, shop, read news, pay for meals and post their thoughts and pictures online.
In December 2017, WeChat released its mini game function within the app, and among the most popular offerings was a platform-jumping game called Jump Jump.
Douyin’s mini game, called Music Jumping Ball, bears a close resemblance to the WeChat title. In the game, players press on the screen to keep a ball hopping on a row of buildings to the beat of a song, and collect points for each successful jump. Users can share their scores with friends on Douyin.
Beijing-based ByteDance – which has surpassed Uber Technologies to become the world’s most valuable start-up, with a US$75 billion valuation – previously launched a series of mini games within its news aggregator app Jinri Toutiao, but none of those have become a hit.
ByteDance declined to comment on the new Douyin game or the company’s video game operations.
Douyin may prove be a better platform to host games than Jinri Toutiao. The app’s overseas version, known as TikTok, became the world’s most downloaded iPhone app in the first quarter of last year, with 46 million downloads. Overall, Douyin and TikTok have more than 500 million global active users.
Gaming is a big theme among the millions of short clips Douyin users create every day. Last month, Douyin users helped a wacky casual game about throwing people off the rooftop become the most downloaded game in Apple’s App Store in China, after videos of them playing the game gained prominence on the platform.
ByteDance’s latest foray into video games has come amid a move by China’s internet giants to broaden their content offerings to gain greater user “stickiness”.
In December, Kuaishou, another popular short video app backed by Tencent, started to test its own mini game function. Its first game also looks similar to WeChat’s Jump Jump.
The success of Jump Jump, which had 100 million daily users at the start of 2018, attracted global brands like McDonald’s and Nike to place advertisements in the game.
Shenzhen-based Tencent has launched two video apps in a bid to catch up with ByteDance in China’s booming short video market, which was estimated to have 353 million viewers last year.
Additional reporting by Yingzhi Yang
