**: Finance Associated Press.
The Spring Festival holiday is approaching, and party games with both casual and social attributes are once again popular. Taking "Egg Boy Party", which is currently the most popular, as an example, as of this article, "Egg Boy" has more than 500 million registered users and a DAU (number of daily active users) of 30 million, making it the highest DAU game in NetEase's history.
After the popularity of "Egg Boy", party games have naturally become an outlet for major game manufacturers to compete for investment. A number of game manufacturers, including Tencent, have also gathered together on party games, and "new parties" have frequently appeared on various mobile game lists with the blessing of massive resources, intending to compete with "Egg Boy".
In fact, in the game industry, it is not uncommon to use similar games and large investments to win players to achieve a turnaround, and plagiarism + throwing money has even become the consistent play of many leading enterprises. But now, as the tide of traffic has receded, the intentions of the "new party" do not seem to be quite successful.
Relevant data show that at present, the core data such as the ** volume and estimated revenue of "new party" games such as "Dream Star" have fallen off a cliff after the peak. Some industry insiders said that at present, it seems that many new entrants still want to copy the past style of play on party games, but due to the existence of UGC mechanisms and social attributes of party games themselves, the effect of the past imitation + money burning strategy may be greatly reduced.
The party game is a hit.
Party game literally means "a game played at a party", and it has been loved by more and more players for its light-hearted, funny, and easy-to-play characteristics.
A player told me that nine out of ten friends around him are playing, some of them are swiped on Douyin, and some friends want to play with recommendations. Even with him and his classmates, family members joined in the party games.
How hot are party games? We can also get a glimpse or two from NetEase's super hit product "Egg Boy Party". Since its launch in May 2022, Egg Boy Party has quickly attracted the attention of a large number of casual players, especially young players. Starting at the end of 2022, Egg Boy Party has topped the App Store's list of free games for 26 consecutive days.
Another Tencent's party game "Yuan Dream Star" was also launched on December 15 last year, although the popularity is not as good as "Egg Boy Party", but with the promotion and support of Tencent's full resources, Tencent's "Yuan Dream Star" was even once nicknamed the "new prince" of the goose factory by players.
According to Qimai data, in the past three months, "Egg Boy Party" has steadily risen in the ranking of the iOS game best-selling list, and as of January 30, "Egg Boy Party" ranked 8th in the iOS game best-selling list, and at the same time occupied the top spot in the iOS family party game best-selling list for a long time. Although the momentum of "Meta Dream Star", which has been making waves since its launch, has declined recently, it is also at the top of the best-selling list of games in the ranking list, and as of January 30, "Meta Dream Star" ranked 16th in the best-selling list of iOS games.
The logic behind the popularity.
In stark contrast to the popularity of party games, the overall state of the gaming industry in the past two years has not been encouraging.
Relevant data show that in 2022, the scale of game users in China will total 66.4 billion people, a year-on-year decrease of 033%;The actual sales revenue of the game market was 26588.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1033%, of which, the actual sales revenue of the mobile game market was 19305.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 144%。
As for the reason why party games can become popular against the market, it is generally believed that party games match the fragmentation of young users and the characteristics of social online, and the simple gameplay can meet the needs of more users and expand the scope of potential users.
Compared with MOBA and battle royale games, party games have a relatively shorter single game time, a more happy and casual game atmosphere, and less demanding players' operating skills. The producer of "Yuan Dream Star" once said to **.
But in the eyes of more industry insiders, the reason for the continued high popularity of party games is not limited to this.
A game industry veteran said that as many party gamers say, "friends are the highest configuration of the game", and the strong social nature of party games is one of the important factors supporting the continued popularity of party games. Taking "Egg Boy Party" as an example, unlike MOBAs and chicken-eating games that rely on black teams with acquaintances, light socialization with strangers in the game has become the mainstream, and players are happy to meet new friends through simple and random interactions in the game.
In addition, unlike other ways to maintain players' stickiness to the game through high-cost production or promotion, for party games, the existence of its UGC (user content production model) ecosystem deepens users' stickiness to the game.
Players' enthusiasm for social interaction and UGC content can be seen in the data, according to the official statistics of "Egg Boy Party", a total of more than 12 million egg boys found partners in the park last year, and all park maps received a total of 2.2 billion collections, and the map of Mengze's Ring Match was even more than 1200 million plays, setting a record for the highest number of plays on a single map; In the "Egg Match Festival", which kicked off on December 15, the number of original maps of "Egg Boy Party" reached 330,000 in a single day, and the cumulative number of parties held exceeded 40 billion.
A higher dimension of competition.
Due to the easy imitation of game content and gameplay, often after the emergence of a popular game, replicas will follow, which has always had a serious problem of product homogenization in the industry.
In fact, after the fire of "Egg Boy Party", party games have become an outlet for major game manufacturers to invest in.
In addition to Tencent's "Yuanmeng Star", party games such as Thunder Games' "Wonderful Fighter", XD Network's "Party Star" and Giant Network's "Space Kill" have also been introduced to the market, in addition to Eagle Point Network's "Bom Boum" and Lilith's "Life Party" and many other similar games have released trailers or are in the process of product polishing.
Game manufacturers also spend a lot of money on the promotion of their own party games. Taking "Yuan Dream Star" as an example, in the early stage of the game's launch on December 15, Tencent carried out a huge publicity, and the opening screen of the APP, the list of the app store, and the advertising of the circle of friends continued. On the day of the game's release, it was announced that it would invest 1.4 billion yuan in "Yuan Dream Star" to build a game ecology.
The fanfare of the "New Party" reminded players of the "Chicken War" of the year, and "Yuan Dream Star" also topped the iOS free list for a time under the huge promotion. But unlike the "Chicken War", no matter how "Yuan Dream Star" builds momentum, it is still difficult to shake the status of the first brother in the rivers and lakes of "Egg Boy Party".
Data from multiple third-party statistical platforms show that at present, in terms of core indicators such as ** volume, revenue data, and market volume, there is still a big gap between "New Party" and "Egg Boy".
In this regard, the above-mentioned industry insiders said that unlike the past when players can be captured and turned around by relying on competing products and large-scale promotion, the current moat of "Egg Boy Party" is far from being comparable to traditional games, and the competition of parties is obviously a higher-dimensional competition in the previous "chicken war", and the past strategy of relying on imitation + burning money may not work again.
It is reported that at present, "Egg Boy Party" has built a complete and rich UGC ecosystem, and is still using the blessing of new technologies such as AI to further promote the convenience, fun and diversity of UGC content creation. And the construction of UGC content, in addition to the need for capital investment, the accumulation of time is also essential, the first bureau can be one step ahead in capital investment, but time is not able to catch up.
During this spring, "Egg Boy Party" will invest 15 million yuan in cash and 10 million game coins to open the [Create the Egg Era] activity, and individual creators can get up to 1.5 million bonuses at one time. In addition, there are corresponding official contracts and traffic support.
It is believed that after the activities during the Spring Festival, the activity of "Egg Boy Party" players will further increase, the user viscosity will be further improved, the moat of content + social networking will become more and more stable, and it may be more and more difficult for new parties to catch up. The person further said.
Disclaimer: The market is risky, choose carefully! This article is for reference only and is not intended as a basis for trading.