The first truly heavyweight mobile game of 2023 - "Dawn Awakening: Life" starts today.
From the exposure of the product in 2020 to the present, what kind of data performance does this open-world survival mobile game created by the so-called "Tencent Photon 300-member team took (at least) 3 years" to create?
After removing soft text, advertising, moisture, and one-sided views, what is the objective data of this game?
How does it warm up? What are the actions in the purchase volume and spread? What are the results so far?
Behind the appointment of 70 million people, why do we use the words "fragmentation" and "nuclear explosion" to describe the current situation?
Today, DataEye Research Institute will talk in detail about the warm-up and current situation of "Dawn Awakening: Life", which may be the most detailed and data insight article at present.
In order to show objectivity, this article will strictly distinguish between "facts & figures" and "DataEye Institute views".
If you disagree with your opinions, you can only refer to the [Facts & Figures] section, based on your own opinions, see in the comment area.
Tencent's background for games
【DataEye Research Institute Viewpoint】
Tencent's game project establishment and distribution in recent years have a common background and rules: big track, big IP, big production, national and even global large-scale brand marketing, "League of Legends Mobile Game", "Naruto", "Dark Zone Breakthrough" and "Return to the Empire" are all like this, let's just refer to it as "nuclear explosion type" idea.
Under this layer of background/idea, the warm-up and launch of "Dawn Awakening: Life" currently presents several major features:
First, the appointment cycle is very long, and appointments have soared in the past year. From exposure in 2020, to preparation for launch in 2021, and then to the final sprint of the version number only in January 2023, "Dawn Awakening: Life" has a reservation cycle of more than 2 years for various reasons.
In the end, the reservation volume exceeded 70 million, and more than 50 million was obtained in the past year. The following is a screenshot of the official website of DataEye Research Institute on December 22, 2021, when the number of reservations was 17.04 million.
Second, due to the long planning time, the budget expenditure of brand and performance advertising is likely to be last year. Tencent suffered a series of major changes last year, with marketing budgets tightening in the second half of last year. "Dawn Awakening: Life" is likely to be carried out before, whether it is the budget expenditure of the brand or the purchase volume. If placed this year, this "nuclear explosion" thinking of brand marketing (a large number of top spokespersons, talents, significant advertising space) is expected to be difficult to promote.
Third, emphasis on brand, channel, effect advertising is medium and high. Following the "nuclear explosion type" idea, "Dawn Awakening: Life" also focuses on brand communication this time, and it is also a double-end linkage. In terms of performance advertising, although the amount of advertising is soaring so far, with reference to the ideas of "Dark Zone Breakthrough" and "Return to the Empire", DataEye Research Institute's view expects that the effect advertising of "Dawn Awakening: Life" is likely to show a "wave of flow" trend, which will continue to soar in recent days, but will fall back to a stable and low level in the future.
The above is the background and some basic views, and the following begins to disassemble "Dawn Awakening: Life" in three aspects: product selling points, buying volume and social media communication.
Product selling points
【Facts & Figures】
In the official advertisement released by the game, the project team highlighted selling points such as "open world", "rich survival gameplay", "diverse combat experience", and "more realistic and free open world". A lot of reporting also revolves around these points.
Specifically, in the performance creative, DataEye-Tidea shows: "big sister", "goddess", "big black bear", "BOSS" and other elements are high-frequency words that appear in the narration of the material in the past 30 days, and there are many gameplay content keywords such as "face pinching system" and "construction and placement".
【DataEye Research Institute Viewpoint】
DataEye Research believes that the "Dawn Awakening: Life" project team presents two different game selling points in the dimensions of official advertising and purchases.
Brand advertising summarizes the game characteristics, gameplay, and differences, making it more "tall" and "unique"; The high-frequency vocabulary data of the purchased materials shows that the project team implements the selling points of the game in the gameplay elements and social elements, making the game more topical, memorable and more specific.
In fact, the game has just been launched, and the players who currently enter the game are mainly pre-booked users (many mobile phones will be automatically downloaded this year after pre-ordering). Expected to enter the explosive phase today, Dawn Awakening: Life will continue to expand its marketing reach.
Specifically, on the buying volume side and brand communication side, what are the actions in the warm-up stage of "Dawn Awakening: Life"? Let's look at them separately.
Buy-volume placement
(1) Delivery
【Facts & Figures】
"Dawn Awakening: Life" began to undergo material testing as early as September 2020 after it was exposed, but it did not get a version number until January 2023, and there was a small peak in February. DataEye-ADX data shows that the product has less material in the test stage before the finalization, and the total material does not exceed 100 groups, of which there are more picture materials.
On the day that the product was announced on February 16, the purchase volume of "Dawn Awakening: Life" soared, with more than 1,200 sets of materials released in a single day, and later the performance of the release volume declined, even the day before the launch, the volume did not soar, the overall performance was relatively flat, and the average daily volume remained above 400 sets.
Today, the game is ramping up. As of 12:30 on the 23rd, "Dawn Awakening: Life" has exceeded 2400 sets.
In contrast, it is also a shooting gameplay product, and the volume of "Dark Zone Breakout" in the warm-up period shows a relatively stable trend, with an average of more than 400 sets per day. On the day of launch, the delivery volume soared, and the number of materials released in a single day exceeded 2,100 sets of materials.
(2) Content of creative materials
【Facts & Figures】
From the perspective of the first 3S eye-catching, among the top 20 video materials in the past 30 days, "Dawn Awakening: Life" emphasizes more on the "social system", mainly showing elements such as romantic relationships, online experience, and game dating.
△In the past 30 days, the TOP20 planned video material released by "Dawn Awakening", data source: DataEye-ADX
In addition, these materials include an introduction to gameplay, a high-freedom gaming experience, and a demonstration of the driving system.
From the perspective of creative form, among the top 20 video materials in the past 30 days, the efficient materials of "Dawn Awakening: Life" mainly package ideas in the creative form of "UGC-like short films" (native videos, "oral broadcasts") and "game character stories", and the proportion of these two types of materials is as high as 90%. At the same time, the project team also did some brand advertising and live materials.
【DataEye Research Institute Viewpoint】
DataEye Research Institute believes that the current material of "Dawn Awakening: Life" presents diversified and routine characteristics as a whole, and the overall appearance is young, lively and interesting.
Specifically, the eye-catching point emphasizes the game content, highlighting key gameplay elements and social elements. And the creative form also uses oral narration and character stories as the main creative methods (yes, like next door tomorrow).
The materials related to "Dawn Awakening: Life" present a strong "communication thinking", highlighting the basic gameplay and game content of the game in a more understandable and relaxed way, forming a more straightforward game material content, most of the materials do not pay attention to the brand and style like "Dark Zone Breakout", but are more grounded, heavy on effects, and heavy on communication and chat.
All in all, the "Dawn Awakening: Life" effect creative has obvious differences from many of Tencent's previous products.
(3) Purchase copywriting
【Facts & Figures】
DataEye-ADX delivery data shows that in the past 30 days, in addition to the product name itself, "open world" and "survival" are the key selling points of the project team's main output to the outside world. At the same time, popular words also include keywords such as "70 million reservations", "self-research" and "high rating".
【DataEye Research Institute Viewpoint】
DataEye Research Institute believes that in terms of buying copywriting, "open world" and "survival" are both the core of the product and the key to prying core players, the former highlighting the freedom and content richness of the game, and the latter prying players interested in the apocalyptic survival theme.
Summary of buying volume: The warm-up launch was previously "a wave", and now it is soaring again. In terms of materials, creativity focuses on "communication" and "effect", which is different from Tencent's previous brand-heavy thinking.
Social media communication
(1) Brand image: focus on product fit, and the spokesperson "Shi Huang" may be for the subsequent overseas trip
【DataEye Research Institute Viewpoint】
On the day of the product finalization, "Dawn Awakening: Life" announced that it would invite Will Smith to serve as the brand spokesperson of the game and shoot a related brand short film. The endorsement candidate "Shi Huang" is expected to be finalized in 2021 and 2022, and the "Oscar Bibi" event is expected to be "finalized".
In contrast, "Shi Huang" has a good influence in the world, and it is also convenient for going to sea later. The screen image of its classic movie "I Am Legend" has a high degree of compatibility with the product itself. In contrast, in the early years, Tencent's selection of spokespersons often focused on traffic.
According to the Baidu index, the user portraits of Will Smith's followers are mainly 20-39 years old, with slightly more men, which is also in line with the age group of core users of the product. In addition, the project team also invited Phoenix Legend to sing the theme song for the product.
【DataEye Research Institute Viewpoint】
Tencent's previous marketing often focused on brand display and paid attention to "tall". The brand of "Dawn Awakening: Life" is somewhat special, telling the gameplay content and world view of the game through the form of Will Smith's dictation, highlighting the product features.
On the whole, the "Dawn Awakening: Vitality" project team has distinctive characteristics in showing the brand image: first, "global level"; The second is to pay attention to the fit with the product.
(2) Multi-platform social media communication: Multi-platform launch of creator programs, but video accounts are not the focus
Due to Tencent's large marketing volume, wide scope, heavy brand, and heavy social media. In order to observe the specific data of social media, we specially invited DataStorytelling to provide relevant social media data (DataStorytelling is China's leading one-stop big data and AI intelligent application provider, building a full value chain solution from data collection, processing, analysis, modeling to commercial applications, and has 50+ applications such as DataTalk Radar, DataTalk Insight, and DataTalk Aggregation), and the following data comes from DataStory's Internet big data acquisition and analysis platform - DataTalk Aggregation.
【Facts & Figures】
According to data from several storytelling social media data, after the product finalization day of "Dawn Awakening: Life", the project team started activities on many domestic platforms.
From the perspective of the trend of interactions, the "official announcement" reached its peak on the 16th of the same day (because the data has been since February, as of 10 o'clock this morning, there is currently very little interaction on the 23rd).
From the perspective of interaction data (likes, retweets, comments), WeChat (light pink line) accounted for the highest proportion, interaction data accounted for more than 35%, Kuaishou (deep black line) ranked second with 30%, and Douyin and B station interaction data are similar, closely followed.
From the perspective of the number of articles/videos on social media platforms, Weibo is the main social media front, with related content accounting for nearly 50%, while WeChat accounts for only 1.9%.
In terms of the distribution of emotional types, neutrality is the majority, and there are very few negatives, with positive content accounting for about 14.8% and negative content only 2.3%. In the distribution of word clouds on social media platforms, brand spokespersons such as "Phoenix Legend" and "Zeng Yi" are concerned by users, and keywords such as "camp", "survivor" and "public test" are prominent.
【DataEye Research Institute Viewpoint】
Pay attention to UGC, pictures and texts emphasize Weibo, videos emphasize WeChat game circles, Kuaishou, B station, and Douyin is "tap water". After the product was announced, the project team began to vigorously support the "Dawn Awakening Creator Program". According to official data, this plan links many domestic platforms, including WeChat game circles, there is also a large number of UGC content, and there is more video content. DataEye Research believes that the project team may hope to take this opportunity to encourage the UGC content ecology and enrich content marketing and communication.
DataEye Research observed that since February, the project team has not paid special attention to video accounts, such as topic activities, small tasks, and so on. At present, there is not much about "Dawn Awakening: Life" on the video account, and most of them are "tap" content of vertical accounts. The WeChat game circle has outstanding performance.
(3) Influencer marketing: Multiple Douyin live broadcast rooms waiting for the game to start
【Facts & Figures】
DataEye Research Institute observed that "Dawn Awakening: Life" has entered the "Kuaishou Game Partner Program" on February 1, and nearly 5,200 influencers have participated in the creation so far, and the video content has exceeded 1.1W, with a total of more than 7,500W views.
In terms of Douyin's short-sighted platform, as a Tencent product, "Dawn Awakening: Life" does not have a plan to enter its game publisher. However, it is worth noting that entering "Dawn Awakening" in the search bar will automatically pop up relevant live broadcast terms, and after clicking it, you will find that multiple live broadcast rooms with "Dawn Awakening" in their names are waiting for the game to start.
Brand communication side summary: Spokespersons choose to focus on fit, more grounded and suitable for brand image display, and actively promote UGC content, or pursue a balance between core users and pan-users.
summary
【DataEye Research Institute Viewpoint】
(1) The nuclear explosion of "Dawn Awakening: Life" is indeed amazing, but I am afraid it will be difficult to see.
In the past, the marketing of games in Tencent's system had two basic characteristics based on the underlying logic of the "nuclear explosion" idea:
(1) Rely on WeChat QQ channel to do double-end combined transportation;
(2) Attach great importance to IP+ brand. Tencent is relatively new to information flow effect advertising and performance-based influencer marketing.
Looking at Tencent's game marketing in recent years, Tian Mei's "Return to the Empire" also pays equal attention to product effectiveness. Others such as "League of Legends Mobile Game", "Golden Shovel Battle", "Naruto" and "Dark Zone Breakout" are mainly a combination of IP + channel traffic + brand marketing.
At the same time, DataEye Research Institute learned that Tencent's products have certain restrictions on the advertising of external information flow effects - as expected, "Dawn Awakening: Life" did not invest in Douyin and did not do Douyin expert marketing.
In contrast, the old rival NetEase's thinking in recent years, in addition to "holding high and fighting" (such as "Dark: Immortal"), there is another idea: first operate around core users in the early stage, and then find an opportunity to break the circle (such as "Endless Lagrange" and "Egg Party"). Of course, there is no higher or lower between the two ideas, but only the different genes and background colors of the enterprise.
"Dawn Awakening: Life" basically follows Tencent's "nuclear explosion" thinking. People have to admire Tencent's investment and determination in marketing resources.
But after last year's marketing crunch, I'm afraid it's hard to see a game with such a marketing spectacle anytime soon.
(2) The overall marketing of "Dawn Awakening: Life" has some "sense of separation"
DataEye Research Institute sorted out Tencent's overall marketing this time, and "it seems" that there is some sense of separation:
The first is the fragmentation of product marketing.
The gameplay of the product is more hardcore and complex, and the apocalypse, shooting core players are ecstatic, but pan-users may be uncomfortable. However, the brand communication action of "nuclear explosion global and high fighting" has attracted a large number of pan-users.
The reasons behind it: First, Tencent's R&D and marketing departments have poor information, and different marketing departments within the marketing department have poor information (there is no way to do this when the company is big); Second, perhaps Tencent hopes to bombard with sound and cultivate more core players.
Possible problems: brand communication instantly exploded, the most likely consequence is that "core players and pan-users fly together, high-end players and white novices are the same" leads to chaos in the internal social environment of the game - the big guy can't look at Mengxin, Mengxin can't play and feel despised. Further, it is reflected in the data: "the data in the first month soared, and the data fell sharply in the next month", which was the case in the first year of the big IP celebration. It is recommended that the project team pay attention to the game churn rate and improve the social environment.
The second is the separation of brands and buying volumes.
In terms of brand communication, it pursues a lofty and international style, which is still "propaganda thinking" (Tencent's consistent style). But in terms of buying volume, it is "communication thinking", young, relaxed and lively (NetEase consistent thinking). Low EQ: Isn't this the fodder of tomorrow? High emotional intelligence: Tencent has also learned the "communication thinking" of UGC-like video (oral broadcast), which is amazing!
The reasons behind it: First, the information and poor cognition of the brand department and the buying volume department (suppliers), and second, the long-term preparation, appointment, and interpretation of the general direction of marketing may change.
Possible problem: Character and style are not coordinated, but there are no special consequences. It is to make the audience feel a little "fine".
The third is the game short video, is it mainly a video account, or a WeChat game ➕ circle? The failure of the two to be connected is also a kind of separation.
As we all know, the video number is the "hope of the whole village" and is the prince of the traffic level. And "Dawn Awakening: Life" is the prince of the game product level.
DataEye Research Institute originally thought that the two successors were about to meet, but did not expect to kill a second prince - WeChat game circle (which also has short video content, and the marketing campaign is independent, and the video number is not connected for the time being) There are currently incentive activities for the game. So excuse me, should "Dawn Awakening: Life" mainly promote the video account, or the short video of the WeChat game circle?
The reason behind it: DataEye Research Institute expects that Tencent still attaches importance to the private domain and position, and pays more attention to the short video of the WeChat game circle in the early stage, and then promotes to break the circle in the video account, after all, the video number is relatively "more public domain" (but relatively).
Possible problems: From the perspective of Channels, performance-based talent marketing was originally Tencent's short board, and the small task of Channels was expected to make a representative case with the popularity of "Dawn Awakening: Life" (there is a certain SLG as a typical case in the Douyin game publisher plan next door), but in the short term, it seems that there is no drama. From the perspective of "Dawn Awakening: Life", it seems that effect-based influencer marketing can only rely on Kuaishou, not to mention the quality of talents, Kuaishou players' ability to pay, emmmm. It is recommended that the project team pay attention to the video number in the subsequent circle-breaking stage.
Overall, in this 2023 "the largest marketing at present", "Dawn Awakening: Life" is indeed big and determined, and it has also broken through the shackles of previous Tencent games in some aspects, but there are indeed some problems.
Of course, these problems are more problems at the Tencent level and even the entire Internet level, rather than at the IEG level.
DataEye Research will continue to pay attention to how "Dawn Awakens: Life" performs in the future.