Author丨Ye Zengwen
Cover**丨Yuan Dream Star official Weibo
What is the most talked-about game genre in 2023?
It's not the traditional popular SLG (strategy game), RPG (role-playing), or enduring MOBA game (multiplayer competition), but a party game - every day, tens of millions of players turn into 3D cute creatures, call friends in the game world, and party around the party campfire.
Tencent's first party game with the label "Family Carnival", "Yuan Dream Star", topped the App Store free list within 90 minutes of its launch on December 15. A week after its launch, the popularity of the game has not subsided, and the App Store free list dominated the list for a week, and the best-selling list of the game was once second only to "Honor of Kings", ranking sixth as of press time.
The news of the game manufacturer's layout of party games will run throughout 2023. In addition to Tencent and NetEase, game manufacturers such as XD Network, Eagle Horn Network, Recreate Games, and Lilith Games have also announced or launched self-developed party games, and even trendy toy manufacturers such as Bubble Mart have also made product layouts.
The fanatical B-side is that the game world is never short of fleeting stars. Many manufacturers have laid out party games, how to ensure that the bonfire burns for a long time?
With the entry of Tencent's "Yuan Dream Star", the competition for party games that has already started has become more intense.
During the warm-up period, there were more than 50 million pre-registration players waiting for the launch of "Dream Star". According to Qimai data, the revenue of the iOS side in China alone was 10.78 million US dollars after the launch of "Yuan Dream Star", and generally speaking, the Android side is twice that of the iOS side, so it is estimated that the revenue of "Yuan Dream Star" in the first week in China exceeded 32 million US dollars.
As early as 2016, a number of phenomenal party games such as "Humanity Fails", "Among Us" and "Fall Guys" have emerged overseas. Among them, the monthly active users of "Among Us" once exceeded 500 million in 2020.
Fall Guys has made more players feel the charm of party games.
Source: Steam
During the Spring Festival in 2023, the party game "Goose and Duck Killing" set a record of 700,000 people on the Steam platform at the same time, and quickly entered the field of vision of domestic users through social software. Since then, the popularity of party games has been soaring in China. At the end of the year, with the addition of "Yuan Dream Star", the popularity was pushed to the peak.
At present, there are a complete range of domestic party games, and there are also game manufacturers of different sizes behind it.
Game manufacturers also attach great importance to party games, and Tencent President Martin Lau mentioned "Yuan Dream Star" at the third quarter earnings report**, calling party games a "new opportunity for Tencent to build and invest." He said that more time was put into the development of "Metadream Star" than before to ensure quality, and he had high hopes for this "game that uses new IP in high-potential genres". According to a ** report, Wang Xinwen, CEO of Lilith Games, also attaches great importance to party games, and even personally wrote the planning plan for party products.
More than a dozen colleges and universities participated in the co-creation plan of "Dream Star".
Source: Yuanmeng Star***
The determination to enter the game is not only the platform of the executives, but also the investment of real money.
NetEase announced that it will spend 500 million yuan in the next 2 years to incentivize the UGC (user-generated content) creators of "Egg Boy Party".
Tencent, on the other hand, has invested more heavily and extensively in the construction of the party game ecosystem. Tencent said that in the first phase, it will invest 1.4 billion yuan in ecological incentives**, of which 1 billion yuan will be used to support UGC creators, 300 million yuan will be used to support creators to create on nine major content platforms (Bilibili, Douyin, **hao, etc.), and 100 million yuan will be used to build a party e-sports event ecology. In addition, Tencent also said that this is only the first phase of investment, and the future investment is "not capped".
Most of the influential players in the gaming track have already made it to the party table, but there is no shortage of shining but fleeting meteors in the gaming world, how to keep this fire alive for a long time?
Party games can quickly attract a large number of players because of their low-threshold, interactive casual gameplay. But also because of the playlist.
First, the content is insufficient, many party games before, such as "Among Us" and "Goose and Duck Kill", the popularity is often fleeting.
At its peak, "Among Us" once exceeded 500 million monthly active users, becoming the world's highest monthly active game, but its popularity fell off a cliff after 3 months.
The reason for this is that this kind of gameplay is relatively fixed, and the official does not update the new map and new characters in time to make players leave, and other werewolf-like party games that will be launched in the future also distract players.
In terms of gameplay, traditional party games are naturally prone to lack of player stickiness.
Gamers are usually divided into competitive and exploratory classes. Compared with FPS, MOBA, and SLG games, casual party games are not very confrontational, and the gameplay does not pay much attention to strategic confrontation and cooperation, so it is difficult to continue to attract competitive players.
Exploratory players often want to explore in an open world, and the scene, gameplay, and story are the goals of exploration. The traditional hardcore 3A masterpiece has complex main and side quests, and the plot and world view are also quite grand. But the party game has less content, and there aren't many points to explore and explore.
Party games need to maintain the enthusiasm of players, and more importantly, to maintain the emotions of players sharing joy and "mingling" with friends in the game, but if there is little or no content that provides this emotional value, the positive emotional feedback that players get will quickly fade and get up and leave the "party".
Many domestic manufacturers are competing for layout, how will they break this fate?
If a party game wants to break the game, it needs to make up for weaknesses such as lack of competitiveness and weak content, and create an ecosystem that can make content continue to be produced, so that players can play with friends for a long time, and finally jump out of the shackles of the concept of party games.
Taking Tencent's "Yuanmeng Star" as an example, domestic game manufacturers are continuing to create innovative party game content experiences through the combination of PGC + UGC.
In terms of complementing the competitiveness and confrontation, "Yuan Dream Star" mobilized the support of a number of TiMi Studio's teams with rich R&D experience in leisure, racing and shooting, and jointly developed special gameplay such as "** Master" and "Forza Motorsport" with "Yuan Dream Star". For example, in the "Forza Motorsport" of "Dream Star", in addition to a variety of maps, there are also a variety of vehicles, roadblocks, passing paths and other designs, with rich mechanics and strong replayability.
Content is especially important for party games that are weak in confrontation, casual and social. In order for the party game to endure and continue to be popular, it must be fed by an endless stream of living water in the content.
In terms of content expansion, "Yuanmeng Star" has not only obtained the genuine authorization of "Fall Guys" and "Mankind is Defeated", but also reached linkage cooperation with many IPs. At present, well-known IPs such as "Yuanmeng Star" and "Glory of Kings", "Kung Fu Panda" and "Crayon Xiaoxin" are linked.
Judging from the linkage between "Dream Star" and "Glory of Kings" at the beginning of the launch, cross-border cooperation is not limited to giving away king's co-branded fashion, but also launches a special play area and customized theme map in the game.
"Dream Star" and "Glory of Kings" jointly sent the king co-branded fashion
Source: Yuanmeng Star***
Tencent's definition of "Dream Star" is a "family party game", so the entertainment content in the game is not limited to games. "Yuan Dream Star" adopts the idea of platform construction, and uses pan-entertainment resources such as Tencent Film and Television, ** to enrich the entertainment scene in the game. Players in the game can catch up on dramas, watch anime, and listen to ** together in the "Star Home" module, so as to enrich the form of online entertainment and socialization, jump out of the boundary of party games, and create a metaverse-style online social entertainment experience.
Moving the scene outside the game to the world of "Yuanmeng Star" does not only happen between Tencent's games. Previously, "Dream Star" and The Paper jointly launched the "Shanghai Party", announcing that in the future, they will co-create a "game map" to present Shanghai's representative buildings, streets, and landscapes.
To have a continuous supply of high-quality content, it is also inseparable from the construction of a content ecosystem. Judging from the 1.4 billion ecological incentive investment invested by Tencent in the first phase of "Yuanmeng Star", Tencent is laying out the game content ecology in multiple dimensions and "creating dreams" with players.
Tencent has invested 1.4 billion yuan in a multi-dimensional layout of the game content ecosystem
Source: Yuanmeng Star***
Players can use the map editor "Dream Space" of "Dream Star" with a low threshold to define and design maps, gameplay, rules, mechanics, etc., and build the world they want in the game. In order to motivate creators to continue to produce high-quality content, "Dream Star" invested 1 billion yuan in the first phase to support UGC map creators.
Players build their own worlds within the game
Source: Yuanmeng Star***
Judging from the past, the popularity of party games is inseparable from the dissemination and second creation of content platforms, such as "Fall Guys" and "Goose and Duck Kill". The first phase of "Dream Star" invested 300 million yuan to cultivate content creators on nine major content platforms, follow the iteration of the game version, and continue to spread and amplify the interesting points of the game.
In addition, "Yuan Dream Star" also plans to invest 100 million yuan to create a party game e-sports event that can be participated by the whole people. Tencent is the most experienced e-sports organizer in China, and its "League of Legends" and "Honor of Kings" have popular game professional leagues.
With the continuous expansion of gameplay, content and ecology, "Dream Star" has reshaped people's understanding and definition of party games from a simple social party to a new social scene, and then to a metaverse world where reality and virtual merge.
As the most talked-about game track in 2023, all entrants want the party game to burn for a long time. The launch of "Dream Star" is just the beginning, and the evolution of the party game category is far from over. Subsequently, with the influx of many manufacturers and game works, the whole track will become richer, three-dimensional and more interesting.