0 cost, 70 million voices, the lowest cost traffic in history has risen?

Text|DataEye Research Institute.

In the past two years, the game industry has become more and more rubbing, and it has become more and more popular!

For example, "Genshin Impact" broadcast the fan drop incident, and "Against the Cold" quickly stuck to the face. Previously, "Against the Cold" also rubbed "Glory of Kings" for linkage.

For another example, last week's "National B War", NetEase's "Outside the World" went to the competition Weibo comment "Bigger and Stronger Together", which brought it a lot of attention and made it jump to the first place on the free list on the 21st. The number of interactions on the whole network is as high as 70 million.

In the game industry, rubbing is no longer limited to hot spots, but also rubbing against competitions, rubbing heads, rubbing film and television drama IPs, and rubbing non-game apps, as if "everything can be rubbed", and all can be leveraged and leveraged.

What is the logic behind "rubbing traffic"? Why are there more and more? How do you rub it?

Today, DataEye Research Institute talks about the lowest cost marketing and lowest cost traffic in history from three aspects: manufacturer cases, essential analysis, and trend observation.

1. Rub the heat and take advantage of the situation to become the lowest cost traffic of the game 1

In 2021, "Squid Game" exploded, and a game called "Breakthrough Game Simulator - Sugar Cake" replicated all the challenges in "Squid Game". The game was released on September 29 in Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and soon after entered the top of the list, ranking second highest.

Recently, the popular mini-games, 4399 "Adventure Battle", Huanyu Kyushu's "Chicken Fleet Attack" in the game characters, game props and other games have rubbed a variety of anime and star shapes. A small interaction, how many IPs are rubbed in the following materials? Leave a message in the comment area.

The name of the game can also rub:

The overseas version of "The King's Finger" is called "Gandalf Wake Up", rubbing the protagonist of "The Lord of the Rings" Gandalf; The overseas version of "Adventure Wars" is called "The Legend of the Mushroom Brave", and the children's song "The Lonely Brave".

Lilith's "The Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons" rubs on the previous work "The Awakening of the Kingdoms" ("The Awakening of Ten Thousand Dragons" is actually not playing different dragons, and dragons are far from being so many "ten thousand");

In 2019, the up masters even translated Cai Xukun's song "Just Because You Are Too Beautiful" (empty ear translation"Chicken, you're so beautiful"), set off a new round of spoofs. Taking advantage of this craze, overseas game developers have also followed the trend to make a themed game.

Game content Elements can also be rubbed: In 2019, scientists photographed the first black hole** and quickly became popular, after the copyright owner NASA stated that the copyright of the black hole was shared by all mankind, "Against the Cold" quickly launched the "black hole" effect in the game;

In November 2020, there was a "Leonid meteor shower", and Peace Elite prepared a limited-time meteor shower in the game.

"Crashing Iron" does not rub the popularity of the "metaverse" - not rubbing, it is also a rubbing.

Some netizens suspect that the copywriting of "Crashing Iron" is the connotation of the "subway frame" incident, which has caused controversy.

2. Marketing. Typical examples, NetEase's "Against the Cold" mobile game hooked up with "Glory of Kings" on Weibo to seek linkage;

Recently, "Against the Cold" rubbed the "3 pink balls" of Genshin Impact to lose fans, and said that "there are more than a few stone rewards", and there are "massive accessories and action rewards";

Among them, the more successful and relatively high pattern is NetEase's "Beyond the World" to the recent Weibo comment on the product of the competition, saying that "we will become bigger and stronger together".

The inspiration for "bigger and stronger" may come from the fact that in August 2023, when the auto brand "BYD" celebrated its 5 million new energy vehicles, it brought a number of domestic independent brands to highlight Chinese cars and Chinese brands, weaken itself, and show the positive energy of brand competition. The pattern of the conference has been raised to the height of the industry - rubbing on the "industry" has become a high-level advantage to highlight the pattern.

According to the data, in the past month (as of the morning of January 30), the number of interactions on the whole network of "Beyond the World" has reached 72.47 million, of which 10.65 million have been from Weibo.

According to DataEye-ADX data, "Beyond the World" has been the smallest of the three products in the past 30 days, and it was only increased during the "non-deletion test" period, and it currently maintains an average of about 1,000 groups per day. Diandian data shows that since the launch of "Beyond the World", the best-selling list has remained around 10th, and the estimated income can compete with "Love and Deep Space".

4 Yiyou IOS terminal estimated revenue.

Although "Beyond the World" has a small number of purchases, it has "rubbed" the popularity of "Love and Deep Space" and other B games, bringing a wave of controversy and traffic.

is also a new product, before Thunder's "Super Evolution Story 2" was "exploded and modified software" in the early stage of launch, rubbing daily software such as Zhihu, Dianping, Gaode Map, and Boss Zhipin;

The previously popular "Sheep is a Sheep" and miHoYo's "Genshin Impact" rubbed "KFC Crazy Thursday", playing crazy stalks, and did not hesitate to make their "belly bigger";

When "Planet: Reboot" was warming up, the slogan "After tomorrow, there will be no dawn" rubbed off on "After Tomorrow" and "Dawn Awakening".

NetEase has always been jumpy, lively, and young, so it's okay to play like this.

Why are even Thunder, Chaoxi Lightyear and even miHoYo and Lilith rubbing?

DataEye Research Institute believes that since 2023, the connotation of game rubbing has become more and more common, and there are five reasons:

One is the normalization of version numbers, the proliferation of new products, and the need for new games to get out of the circle and quickly gain attention;

The second is that under the situation of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, rubbing, taking advantage of the situation, causing controversy, the operation cost is extremely low, and even there is almost no cost like posting a Weibo, especially NetEase has played a leading role and triggered imitation;

The third is that the game is out of the circle and the demand of young players is no longer like the "upright", "tall" and "daddy" brand tonality in the past. Instead, it is lively, young, and entertaining (or simply ignoring the brand tonality), and young players are also happy to see these fun and topics;

The fourth is the rise of influencer marketing, so that rubbing, borrowing, creating topics, and causing controversy have a medium for further diffusion.

On the one hand, they need to carry heavy KPIs and must make some achievements, on the other hand, they are quite sensitive to young, trendy and hot spots, and at the same time, they are not too rigid to the so-called brand style and have no historical baggage.

Second, the essence of borrowing is "to use familiar old symbols with unfamiliar new brands"; Rubbing the competition is often stirred, with a small big rub, or to take advantage of the situation, is to use the familiar, well-known old symbols, to attract attention and attention to the new symbols. Its essence is to reduce the cost of audience recognition and recognition.

When a new brand is associated with a familiar brand, then everyone will associate it with familiar things, and they will be able to quickly identify the characteristics and remember the new brand. The cost of consumer perception is reduced.

For example, when it comes to "functional drinks", Red Bull is popular, and if you sell Dongpeng special drinks, everyone will feel very unfamiliar with this drink. But with the slogan "tired and sleepy drink xx", which Red Bull has used for n years, there is a sense of familiarity. "Sleepy and tired to drink xx" is a familiar element that has been rubbed. Similarly, JDB borrowed "Fear of getting angry and drink xxx".

The human brain, by nature, tends to be comfortable and lazy. Therefore, when cognition and choice, the brain will always subconsciously tend to choose something that is familiar, easy to understand, easy to recognize, and everyone is concerned about and using. Rubbing the opportunity is to associate and bind unfamiliar elements through "already familiar elements".

1. Take advantage of the situation to break the circle and create a sense of familiarity.

IP co-branding is a necessary skill for many game marketing today. (It can be said that "rubbing" is a low-profile version of the linkage) For example, "Egg Boy Party" is the "linkage madness" in the game circle, which is linked once every 10 days.

One of the core reasons why linkage co-branding is so useful is that it can create a sense of familiarity among the crowd, which can bring new opportunities for further attention. Especially when two brands in different fields collide together, the probability of getting out of the circle will be greatly increased.

2. Create disputes, topics, and talking points.

Looking back on the past two years, there are also many manufacturers (especially NetEase) who often "flirt", "hook up", "yin and yang", and "connotation" other head games.

The essence of this phenomenon is actually to hope that through the action of "rubbing", it will stir up **, exchange low-cost behavior for traffic**, and make it big with a small one. Typical examples such as NetEase "rubbing" "Honor of Kings" and "Genshin Impact", as long as it can gain popularity and controversy through the act of "rubbing", it is already a success.

Such marketing is a double-edged sword:

On the one hand, it does achieve the purpose of communication at a lower cost and quickly attract more attention and topics;

But on the other hand, rubbing is often easy to be "low-level", and it is necessary to pull down the face and open up, which is easy to make people disdainful. The player's face is also gone. And the degree of "rubbing" also needs to be controlled, otherwise it will become infringement and malicious competition. It is easy to cause negative reviews, controversies and even regulatory attention. 3. Research and judgment and viewpoint 1: Under the trend of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, "rubbing" is becoming more and more common in the industry, and creating topics and having fun has become the norm.

From 2023 to 2024, with the surge of new game products, fierce competition, and the situation of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, how to obtain traffic at low cost has become a problem that manufacturers need to solve urgently. Judging from the current situation, "rubbing" is undoubtedly the easiest way, and it is foreseeable that the game industry will become more and more common this year.

By "rubbing" the topic, the manufacturer is actually a low-cost operation of "creating controversy and leveraging public opinion". On the one hand, manufacturers can get more attention or controversy through "rubbing"; For players, they can have fun and find topics through competition between manufacturers - rubbing is often easy to search.

Viewpoint 2: The "rubbing" posture should be accurate and stable, and the hard rubbing should be low.

The game's acquisition circle and gameplay integration have blurred the boundaries of the track, and the distance between "friends" is getting closer and closer. Every time I rub it, if it is small, it is hot, and if it is big, it is easy to infringe and eat lawsuits.

The brand's sensitivity to the event is the key, starting from the direction of marketing, finding the right entry point, not stepping on the competition, making the pattern bigger, and the public's attention will naturally attract to themselves.

For example, the sentence "bigger and stronger" in "Beyond the World" is to show its own higher pattern.

As a comparison, the "Three Pink Balls" fan loss incident of "Against the Cold" rubbing "Genshin Impact", and the slogan "After tomorrow, there will be no dawn" played by "Planet: Reboot" during the warm-up, it is a bit of a step on the other party, which is a little low.

Viewpoint 3: How to take into account long-term operation and long-term operation?

It's not uncommon for games to spark attention and discussion. But after rubbing, a flash in the pan is more common. Another feature of 2023 is that players have higher requirements for satisfaction with the game industry, are more picky, and are more likely to become popular. The success rate of new products is not high, and it is easy to accelerate death if it is not good.

Leverage real-time hot spots to create disputes, which is time-sensitive. If the game content can't carry the traffic "pouring into the sky", the better it rubs, the faster it dies - if morality is not matched, there will be disasters, and people who are not worthy of wealth will be lost. This is quite similar to the celebrity idol of the entertainment industry.

So how to "elegantly" take advantage of the situation while taking into account long-term operations?

From the point of view of game content,Purely rely on hot spots to create a round of hot spots,It is extremely undesirable to eat,Manufacturers should still develop with proven gameplay and long-term aesthetic themes,When encountering a very suitable hot event,You can change the game image、Add or other peripheral systems to add simple gameplay and other operations to drain users。

For medium and heavy games, adding hot spots to the peripheral system is a snake to add to the problem, which is mainly due to the fact that the package of medium and heavy games is too large, the novice guide is too long, and the player attributes are clear, which will lead to the loss of most players in the drainage process.

Therefore, medium-heavy games can combine more hotspots with activities or player operations, and can launch activities in public domain traffic pools, such as Xiaohongshu, ** and other official channels to guide players to participate in UGC content creation and sharing, referring to the operation model of "Egg Boy Party" to ferment hot spots and stretch the battle line for a long time.

Viewpoint 4: The protection of intellectual property rights and IP for head products will inevitably become stricter.

Game manufacturers are paying more and more attention to the protection of intellectual property rights and IP. For example, miHoYo sued "Youchuang Workshop" for using the official art materials of Genshin Impact for a long time without any authorization from miHoYo, operating the so-called "gacha data analysis tool", and applying the login interface of MiHoYo to induce players to provide game data, and has successfully obtained an injunction in litigation; miHoYo has sued Station B and Kuaishou Daren many times, all because of IP.

For example, in March 2022, Shanghai miHoYo Tianming Technology *** sued Sanqi Company and its subsidiary Crater Lake Company for copyright infringement and unfair competition disputes, and Crater Lake Company was sentenced by the court to pay 30,000 yuan in compensation for tampering with and using the picture of Genshin Impact's "Knights of Favonius" without authorization.

Intellectual property protection is the foundation for the healthy and orderly development of the game industry, especially overseas. From the perspective of enterprise management, the cost of prevention is often lower than the cost of accidents, and while focusing on the quality of online games, it is also necessary to pay attention to the prevention of intellectual property infringement. For example, "Mosaic Heroes" went to sea, and ** reported on the suspected infringement of the game "Super Mario" and "Your Name". Later, the project team apologized, saying that the advertising was not well controlled.

In short, taking advantage of the situation has become the lowest-cost way to obtain traffic in the game industry, and it is bound to continue to exist and even explode this year. However, it is easy to step on, easy to low, easy to infringe, easy to "wave down", and it is easier to put yourself under the "magnifying glass".

At the end of the day, you still need to do a good job of product experience. The advantage is surprising, and the product is upright. To be upright and surprising, but also to wear drops of water.

The flow is like water, and water can carry a boat and capsize a boat.

The traffic is overwhelming, it is hugely rich, and it is even more cruel.

Above, I hope to have a reference for you.