When it comes to connecting games with players, channel practices are becoming more diverse and humane. No longer just offering premium game downloads, but also choosing to deliver more premium game content to players.
Recently, Huawei Game Center, together with five games of "Light Encounter", "Happy Fun", "Minecraft", "Defend Radish 4", and "Three Kingdoms Kill", created a "Spring Adventure Market" experience activity at thousands of Huawei experience stores in five provinces of Zhejiang, Luchuan, Guangdong and Hubei. Among them, "Light Encounter", "Minecraft", "Defend radish 4" and "Three Kingdoms Kill" opened the "Hua-themed Store + Business Circle Flash Mob" limited-time pop-up activities in Hangzhou, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Wuhan respectively.
("Happy Fun" event postponed)
This is also the second practice of the Huawei Game Center's Four Seasons Market series of offline activities after the Winter Market, which communicates players and game manufacturers in a form that the public likes to hear, and has once again won the recognition of a large number of players. Obviously, from the winter dimensional market "looking for super-dimensional players" to the spring adventure market "Game Adventure Moment", Huawei Game Center has successfully achieved a deep emotional connection on top of the single relationship between players and games.
Curious, GameLook held talks with NetEase, Flying Fish, and Youka, which participated in the event, to explore in depth how Huawei Game Center can help game marketing through the Four Seasons Bazaar series, and even really promote the game to further enter the lives of players.
Continue the market series, focus on different categories, and help the game to refine operation
Intuitively, Huawei Game Center actually has a clear category selection in the design of the Four Seasons Market event, and thus customizes the theme packaging. That is, through a series of rich activities, the advantages and characteristics of the target game are highlighted to the greatest extent and the directional breakthrough is achieved.
However, unlike the two-dimensional theme that was first tried, this "Spring Adventure Market" is mainly a casual game, and the seasonal atmosphere that fits the recovery of everything in spring emphasizes the theme of "Adventure".
For example, at the Huawei Smart Life Pavilion in Chengdu, Minecraft restored the real game scene on the spot, and added in-game operations such as defeating coolies and setting goats to the setting of the activity link, bringing players an immersive punch card experience like adventure and adventure. Not to mention, there is also the opportunity to receive a series of benefits such as HUAWEI Mate40, ensuring that players come with a good time and return with a full load.
Han, Marketing Manager of Minecraft China Edition, introduced to GameLook: "Huawei Game Center brings together many Minecraft players and is a key operating channel for our products. Not only that, the theme of this Spring Market event, "Adventures", also coincides with the theme of "Minecraft" free adventure, as well as the players themselves full of whimsical creativity. ”
In contrast, Alex, marketing manager of Defending Turnip 4, believes that the game itself is an adventure, after all, it can bring players a fun sensory experience.
He further said: "Although it has been almost ten years since the first generation of Defend Radish was launched, there are still countless players who continue to experience the previous generations of Defend Radish, and have delivered a lot of sounds to us. And this game process is the 'adventure' we want to dedicate to the player. "Defend Radish 4" will also be such a product. ”
Alex went on to explain to GameLook in conversation that casual games are more focused on long-term operations than other categories. "IP creation is a key task of "Defending Radish 4" to lengthen the upward period and lengthen the life cycle, which is highly dependent on various marketing activities with offline as the main body."
The "Spring Adventure Market" presents a professional, efficient and highly reusable case and template for such activities. As the only product that has not yet been officially launched at this event, "Defend Radish 4", which has undergone many rounds of testing and offline activities, naturally attaches great importance to this opportunity.
Therefore, the official chose to create a spring adventure with cute Apo at Huawei's offline store in Guangzhou. In addition to providing the albums of the style changes of "Defending Turnips" in previous generations, there are also opportunities to try out "Defending Turnips 4" in advance, as well as the opportunity to experience the latest levels of the live-action version and challenge golden radishes, and attract the participation of many new and old players on the scene with generous rewards. As of April 10, more than 120,000 users have made game reservations in huawei game centers to create a strong wave of heat storage for game launches. (At this stage, the number of people who have booked "Defend radish 4" has reached 790,000)
Similarly, at Huawei's offline store in Wuhan, "Three Kingdoms Kill" also created an immersive offline scene by reproducing in-game elements, and held activities such as killing friends, "National Color Tianxiang" card games, and lottery redemption postcards, successfully creating a spring adventure with players.
In the dialogue, Jie Zai, the chief planner of "Three Kingdoms Killing", said: "In the past decade, in addition to the change of game content, we have been exploring new activity models outside the game, and we are very happy to innovate and cooperate with different platforms to explore new marketing activities, bringing freshness to players, and at the same time, we can also get inspiration for future planning." ”
Among them, the four seasons market in Huawei Game Center is closely integrated from online to offline, and the rich forms of activities are eye-catching. We also hope that users can trigger more 'adventures' with the Three Kingdoms, culture and life in this 'Spring Adventure'. Jay said.
In GameLook's view, although the two market activities have their own emphases, "warmth" is the consistent main theme. The reason for this is that the player is always at the heart of the Four Seasons Market.
Different from the simple online distribution platform, Huawei Game Center attaches great importance to cultivating a player community atmosphere. It is also on this basis that Huawei Game Center makes full use of the advantages of its own offline stores to build a faster interaction channel for communicating players and products, and continues to promote the innovation of game marketing models online and offline.
Jump out of the traditional marketing framework and break the two major dilemmas of game operation
In a further conversation, Han stressed to GameLook the importance of the current channel: "Nowadays, traffic is inseparable from content, but even if there is a lot of heat, the final effect of communication still depends on the actual conversion." ”
But he also mentioned that the traditional channel distribution mainly stays in the laying of online resources, and the threshold of such resources is high, and the form and content of dissemination are relatively fixed. As a result, in the past game marketing, the actual conversion was difficult to evaluate and measure. In contrast, the Four Seasons Market event is a new way of marketing that can directly contact players, which has become one of the important reasons why Minecraft holds hands with this event.
You know, as a classic sandbox game, Minecraft already has a distinct IP image and brand characteristics. But in fact, "Minecraft" has been using diversified market activities to strengthen the exposure of IP images in the public circle and let more people know its brand.
"The Huawei Game Center combines the novel four seasons theme with the characteristics of each game product, which can communicate with players at zero distance and the content is also very interesting." While strengthening the exposure of the game, it is conducive to forming word-of-mouth communication and effectively enhancing user conversion. Han said. What's more, backed by the huge advantages of Huawei's offline stores, the Spring Market campaign can also solve the problem of achieving multi-dimensional urban coverage in traditional marketing.
"This event spans multiple cities in five provinces and reaches users in different regions, which we are very willing to promote." Han further explained: "Minecraft chose Chengdu because it is one of the most concentrated areas for players, and we hope to have a more direct connection and communication with Sichuan-Chongqing players to understand their suggestions and ideas for Minecraft. ”
This is not an isolated case, Alex also lamented the advantages of the wide online and offline coverage of the Four Seasons Market, and the consequent high conversion effect: "Thanks to the resource integration ability of Huawei's game center, under the call of the platform, a variety of products are centrally publicized, multiple stores are carried out synchronously, and online and offline work together, this potential energy is unmatched by the previous 'single soldier combat'." ”
In the conversation, GameLook found that there was also Jie Zai who shared the same view. Different from other games in the event, as a classic IP born from offline board games, "Three Kingdoms Killing" has been constantly trying various operational activities since its operation, such as the launch of puzzle activities on multiple platforms and the joint offline campus tour, carnival held campus confession activities, etc., bringing users different experiences.
However, unlike the official events, the Kasuga Adventure Market is significantly larger, more complex in form, and more diverse in experience for players. After this Spring Adventure Market, "Three Kingdoms Kill", "Minecraft" and "Defend Radish 4" will continue to carry out city touring activities, and the activities will be reproduced to more Chinese-themed stores to achieve wider coverage. Jie Zai said bluntly: "From the experience store trial activity to the theme store tour activity, such a large-scale offline activity, effectively forming a wide coverage of dots and lines, is relatively rare for us and our players." ”
He continued: "This Kasuga Market brings together high-quality games from the leisure category, and has done a series of closely related activities from online to offline, subdividing and strengthening the 'developer-platform-player' game ecological chain. Multi-touch, so that our players also experienced a new form of activity, all-round feel the "Three Kingdoms Kill" game culture. And this fresh experience also allows us to explore the possibility of more forms of activity. ”
In fact, the reason why "Spring Adventure Market" is favored by many game CPs, GameLook believes, is that it is from the Four Seasons Market activity that breaks the framework of traditional game marketing.
Different from the traditional marketing model, the advantage of "market" is that while retaining the advantages of festival marketing scale, it also realizes the unique advantages of high-frequency and precision marketing. Coupled with the offline activity scenarios provided by the massive experience store, Huawei Game Center further exerts the value of the platform, effectively solving the two major dilemmas of the previous conversion effect that is difficult to evaluate and difficult to completely cover the sinking market.
Indeed, relying on huawei's game center's strong distribution capabilities, the Kasuga Adventure Market has directly brought more than 320,000 new downloads to the game side, achieving a solid high conversion. At the same time, relying on Huawei's powerful offline channel resources, it covers thousands of authorized experience stores from first-tier cities to seventh-tier counties, achieving true wide coverage. As Han said, "The channel is the core of the conversion, the entrance to the addition and return of users, and its value is self-evident." "Further, the core value of the channel is the wide reach of potential users, and the effective conversion of offline to online is achieved through more dimensions of the game experience."
Further, the continuous large-scale series of activities can also help huawei game center's "four seasons market activity" IP deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, gradually allowing players to change from players of products to IP loyal users, thus helping market activities and participating in the long-term operation of products.
From "hyper-dimensional players" to "adventure moments", games are more than games
Over the past year, the gaming industry, the tech industry, and the Internet industry as a whole have been thinking about the more realistic value of games beyond entertainment. At the end of the interview, GameLook naturally chatted with several manufacturers about related topics.
After all, backed by a large number of terminals and offline stores, Huawei Game Center, as one of the mainstream channels, is also exploring more relationships between games and life through in-depth cooperation with game CP, and exploring more positive value of games, and the Four Seasons Market is obviously one of the important attempts.
Looking back on this activity, Jie Zai first sighed: "From last year's 'Dimensional Market' to this year's 'Adventure Market', the series of offline activities created by Huawei Game Center bring together games of the same category, so that players can feel that games are not only an entertainment method, but also a life and a world. Giving the game new value and allowing users to appreciate the deep connotation of the game is similar to the brand culture of "Three Kingdoms Kill". ”
In contrast, the more empathetic nature is "Minecraft", after all, it has long been keen to show the multi-value of the game to the outside world.
As we all know, as a sandbox game with a high foundation of pan-user cognition, Minecraft has always encouraged creators and players to freely create and imagine. With the continuous improvement of the creator ecology in the past two years, many works with fresh themes, novel forms and excellent quality have emerged. Constantly showing the public "the possibility of a square", and more possibilities of the game itself.
Today, the Kasuga Market event further provides an offline interactive platform between Minecraft and pan-users. In this regard, Han recalled: "On that day, many users were attracted to the actual experience, felt the characteristics of free creation of games, edutainment and other characteristics, and found that the original square can be so fun and interesting. Moreover, there are many families on the scene, and "Minecraft" can become a family activity, edutainment to the players to popularize positive knowledge, we are very happy. ”
It can be seen that from "looking for super-dimensional players" to "game adventure moments", the four seasons market activities are constantly focusing on subdividing categories and innovating game distribution, while creating a rich game community atmosphere. Online and offline efforts to create a topical activity, gradually making the game from a single circle hobby to a national way of life and entertainment.
It is also during this period that Huawei Game Center helps games to go out of the circle at the social level, while also exploring more value outside the game, so that the game can truly infiltrate all aspects of players' lives. In the future, the game will no longer stop at the online and stop at a small game screen, but will be integrated into every part of the player's life, realizing the cross-dimensional upgrade of game distribution and IP creation.
It is no exaggeration to say that with the continuation of the four seasons market activities, as more game activities come into life, perhaps in the near future, games will become more and more a way of life for people, games from life to life.
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GameLook Daily Game Industry Report
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