In the second half of the competition among major game companies, who will unlock the "evergreen code" of SLG games?
Enduring success is the common pursuit of most business organizations. Now, the gaming industry has entered an era where long - term development is increasingly valued.
In the past few years, "whether a game can achieve long - term success" has become an important consideration for major game manufacturers when selecting game genres and planning their product portfolios.
Looking back at NetEase's past products, many have achieved this goal. Whether it's veteran self - developed Chinese games like Conquest of Elysium, Fantasy Westward Journey, and Journey to the West Online, or games under its distribution such as World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, they have all maintained their vitality over more than a decade of long - term operation.
When "long - lasting games" become the focus of the industry, the specific question of "how to achieve long - term success" has become the main research topic for major game manufacturers.
Among the long - lasting games, one game is about to reach the milestone of ten years of operation this year, which is Conquest of Elysium, the pioneer of the "Conquest - like" SLG genre. As the pioneer and definer of this genre, NetEase created a multi - billion - dollar market segment with this game, attracting giants like Alibaba and Bilibili to enter the market one after another.
With the influx of new entrants, the "Conquest - like" market segment has continued to expand. The key to Conquest of Elysium's ten - year success is that, as the pioneer, it defined the basic framework of the genre. At the same time, it has continuously promoted product evolution through iterative updates, constantly refreshing the user experience and leading the entire SLG industry forward.
On March 27, 2025, Conquest of Elysium officially launched the "Youth Server".
Conquest Youth Server
The "Youth Server" overturns the payment logic of SLG games in the market, replacing the paid gacha system with a copper - coin economic system that can be obtained for free within the game. All generals and battle tactics can be obtained with in - game currency, and players are guaranteed to get a five - star character with each draw. This change addresses the long - standing pain point in SLG games - the gap in line - up between new and old players, shifting the core experience from "gacha pool strength" to "tactical combination research".
At the same time, by removing complex mechanisms such as general awakening, troop advancement, counselor system, and treasure system, it simplifies the gameplay appropriately, returning to a pure gaming experience of strategic competition.
It's not hard to see that the launch of the "Youth Server" is an important attempt by Conquest of Elysium to meet the "low - threshold" needs of new players. This also indicates that as the pioneer of the genre, Conquest of Elysium is responding to the ever - changing needs of players through innovation again, further raising the upper limit of the genre and providing references and inspiration for the long - term operation of games.
The Evolution of "Conquest - like" Games
The SLG genre has always been known for its rich playability, excellent commercial monetization ability, and long - lasting vitality. If we simply divide the game R & D and operation process into "R & D → user acquisition → user retention → payment conversion", SLG games perform extremely well in the latter two stages, featuring strong long - term user retention and high payment conversion efficiency.
According to Gamma Data, in 2023, among the top 100 Chinese self - developed mobile games in terms of overseas market revenue, strategy games (SLG) accounted for more than 30% of the revenue. According to DianDian Data, among the top 85 SLG products in terms of global revenue, more than 90% of the products have been on the market for more than one year, showing a significant long - lasting effect.
Data source: Gamma Data
There are two most mainstream sub - genres under the SLG category: "Conquest - like" and "COK - like". Among them, the "Conquest - like" genre was pioneered by Conquest of Elysium. In the gaming industry, it's rare to name a genre after a specific game. Genres like MOBA, first - person shooter, and racing games are named based on gameplay. For a game to become the prefix of "XX - like", it means that the product not only needs to perform well itself but also has the ability to define the genre.
As the pioneer of the genre, Conquest of Elysium has a history of 10 years to date. In 2015, Conquest of Elysium introduced core elements of the "Conquest - like" genre such as the season system, geopolitical strategy gameplay, and gacha - based payment model into the SLG market segment. After its launch, the game was a great success, maintaining steady growth in users and revenue for more than a dozen consecutive quarters, and has remained in the top of the best - selling list for the past 10 years.
The success of Conquest of Elysium lies in its solution to two major pain points of SLG games at that time: the lack of ecological fairness caused by item - based payment and the long - term ecological collapse caused by numerical accumulation.
Before Conquest of Elysium, traditional SLG games were often not mature enough in terms of commercialization. Take Game of War, the pioneer of the "COK - like" genre, as an example. This SLG game developed by overseas company Machine Zone didn't impose many restrictions on the use of paid resources such as numerical enhancements and acceleration items. How enjoyable a player could have basically depended on how much they spent. Undoubtedly, this model could quickly increase the payment depth and ARPU in the short term, but at the cost of sacrificing the gaming experience of a large number of ordinary players.
Game of War
This short - sighted approach made Game of War gradually face the problem of a single - dimensional user structure. Due to the squeezing of the experience of ordinary players by paid items and resource - acceleration mechanisms, the retention rate of non - paying users continued to decline. In the later stage, the active players in the server were mainly high - spending users, and the competition among big spenders became homogenized due to the lack of a stratified user base. To maintain the user scale, Game of War adopted a high - investment user - acquisition strategy. However, with the intensifying competition in the mobile advertising market, the game eventually declined due to the rising cost of user acquisition.
In response to the above two problems, Conquest of Elysium presented a brand - new solution. Based on the preference of Chinese players for strategy and social interaction, it reconstructed a healthier user ecosystem for SLG games. In terms of specific design, Conquest of Elysium relatively weakened the city - building and character - development process, focusing the gameplay core on the strategic dynamic competition on the large - scale map sandbox, and ensuring the continuous value of generals during season changes.
The introduction of the season system provides players with a sense of goal at specific time points, and the season - matching mechanism helps the game maintain a stable cycle of the player ecosystem. Through the ingenious design of the season cycle, it can also eliminate some of the imbalances and boredom caused by long - term numerical accumulation, creating a fair competitive atmosphere while bringing continuous freshness to players.
Image source: Conquest of Elysium
Based on these innovations, Conquest of Elysium endows the "Conquest - like" genre with stronger long - term user retention and more sustainable profitability compared to traditional SLG games. However, the SLG game industry still needs to face the problem of relatively difficult user acquisition in the early stage. Nevertheless, this imperfection also means that the ceiling of the market segment has not been reached yet. By innovatively optimizing the game's early - stage user acquisition and retention ability, there is still a large room for growth in the overall market scale of the genre.
After Conquest of Elysium established the basic framework of the genre, new followers have emerged from time to time. Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition developed by Lingxi Interactive Entertainment and Three Kingdoms: Master the World distributed by Bilibili are both strong latecomers.
However, according to DianDian Data, after the launch of Three Kingdoms: Master the World last year, the revenue of Conquest of Elysium increased instead of decreasing, with its annual iOS revenue rising by 5.3%. Looking back at history, almost every time a competitor appears, the revenue of Conquest of Elysium is on the rise. This shows that the continuous innovation made by the development team in response to the changing needs of users is constantly injecting new vitality into the game, rather than simply relying on the old model.
The Battle of "Conquest - like" Games among Big Companies
The competition among big companies is often high - profile. Usually, only market segments with extremely high ceilings are worth their key investment, and the "Conquest - like" genre is such a segment.
After NetEase created the market segment with Conquest of Elysium, Alibaba and Bilibili entered the market one after another. In 2019, Lingxi Interactive Entertainment under Alibaba developed and distributed Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition. Last year, Bilibili exclusively distributed Three Kingdoms: Master the World and invested in the Dongfeng Studio, the developer of the game, earlier. The above two new "Conquest - like" games have also become important revenue sources for the two companies in the gaming field.
For new products to stand out in a mature market segment, they often need to improve based on the pain points of the segment and introduce new gameplay. As mentioned above, the "Conquest - like" genre excels in long - term user retention and payment conversion, but has always faced relatively great difficulties in early - stage user acquisition and retention. The reasons are that these games have relatively high strategic difficulty and high payment requirements, making it difficult for new players to get started. In addition, the gameplay that emphasizes PvP and GvG (team - vs - team) can bring a great sense of frustration to the losing side, easily leading new players to quit the game.
Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition, which mainly relies on user - acquisition through advertising, has adopted cost - reduction and efficiency - improvement measures in the past two years. However, in the context of Alibaba Group's "1 + 6+N" restructuring, Lingxi Interactive Entertainment, as part of "N", no longer has the same budget for user - acquisition investment as before.
Three Kingdoms: Master the World, which was launched last year, chose the strategy of "reducing gameplay intensity and payment requirements" while retaining the core gameplay of the "Conquest - like" genre. However, online, players of Three Kingdoms: Master the World have complained about the so - called "reduced payment". Each season has a so - called "optimal solution", and it's difficult to have a good experience without spending money.
Interestingly, despite the emergence of numerous new games, in the fierce competitive environment, Conquest of Elysium still attracts many new strategy - loving players by continuously optimizing and innovating, and constantly exploring and meeting the various needs of players.
As the pioneer of the genre, Conquest of Elysium not only established a series of core frameworks for the "Conquest - like" genre such as the season system and geopolitical strategy gameplay, but also has an advantage in terms of years of content accumulation and a large number of highly loyal users.
Image source: Bilibili
Since the launch of the beta version, the Youth Server has been very popular on Bilibili.
It's worth mentioning that from the perspective of the development of game genres, many genres have witnessed innovation in the past few years. For example, the FPS genre has started to explore the "search - fight - retreat" direction, and some numerical card games have tried to incorporate more content... Every innovation further raises the ceiling of the market segment.
Looking at the development trend of the gaming industry in recent years, big companies have successively launched SLG products, betting on the extremely high ceiling that the "Conquest - like" genre has yet to reach. After all, the mental competition and strategic confrontation brought by SLG games are the long - term pursuits of many players, and this genre of games is definitely a strategic high - ground that big companies cannot afford to miss.
Conquest of Elysium has years of user - base and reputation accumulation, as well as a deep understanding of the genre. Now is a good time to address the pain points of the genre, propose the idea of "free gacha", and make further breakthroughs through product innovation.
The Secret to Conquest of Elysium's Long - lasting Success
Innovation is often not achieved overnight, especially for online games with continuous operation. To achieve long - term success, game strategies must be dynamically adjusted according to the needs of players - even if it means overturning some once - classic game settings.
The launch of the "Youth Server" this time is a bold and prudent attempt by Conquest of Elysium.
The bold aspect is that the "Youth Server" follows the current trend of "reducing gameplay intensity and payment requirements". Moreover, Conquest of Elysium goes further than its competitors in this regard - it cancels the "paid gacha" mechanism and allows players to obtain generals and battle tactics for free with copper coins. Even relatively "casual" players can form four full - level teams in 12 days. Core generals can be obtained through a guaranteed mechanism, greatly reducing the dependence on payment and significantly lowering the entry threshold, thus enhancing the strategic experience.
