Now there's a game in the Chinese version of viral short video app TikTok

Is ByteDance going after WeChat with Douyin's first mini game?

TikTok

Xinmei Shen

Published: 8:32pm, 19 Feb 2019

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This article originally appeared on ABACUS

TikTok, the viral short video app, is about to get more addictive.

TikTok, the viral short video sensation, has its roots in China

Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, just launched its first mini game: Yinyue Qiuqiu, a rhythm game that lets you bounce a ball to the beat.

It's not clear if this game is coming to the West. But mini programs have been all the rage in China.

They're basically apps that live inside other apps, small enough that they can be downloaded virtually instantly. WeChat's enormous collection of mini programs is one of the reasons Tencent's mega-app is so powerful in China -- allowing third-party developers to add more functionality to it, and turning it into a virtual operating system.

WeChat, the app that does everything

The first mini games actually debuted on Facebook in 2016 as Instant Games -- before WeChat rolled out its own in December of 2017.

The biggest mini game hit ever in China is one made by Tencent itself: “Jump Jump”, which amassed 100 million players in just two weeks. By the end of last year, WeChat had more than 7,000 mini games, with more than 100 million daily active players who spend an average of 17 minutes playing them every day.

But adding games and other mini programs to a messaging app is one thing -- adding them to a viral short video app is new territory.

Still, while this is the first game made by Douyin, it’s not Douyin’s first foray into gaming. In mid 2018, the app rolled out a gaming channel where it posts gaming-related short videos and offers a number of popular mobile games for download, including NetEase’s Onmyoji and Identity V.

Incidentally, we haven’t found any of the biggest Tencent titles on its page, including PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings -- an interesting move, given that just yesterday, Tencent won a lawsuit that banned ByteDance’s Xigua Video app from live streaming its hit title Honor of Kings.

Douyin’s maker ByteDance, which also made China’s most popular news app Toutiao, is becoming a rival to Tencent in many areas. Douyin’s competitor Kuaishou is backed by Tencent, which has also been trying to create its own short video apps. And on the other hand Bytedance also released a video chat app, attempting to challenge Tencent on its social turf.

China’s viral king ByteDance is the first major Chinese tech player that made a mark on the world

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