Party games go to the "involution" vortex: above the surface of the water, below the surface of the water

21st Century Business Herald Reporter Zhu Weijing Intern Jiang Hongyi reported from Shanghai

The explosive growth of party games is facing a critical moment to grab the top spot.

NetEase disclosed in its financial report in the first quarter of this year that the gross profit of NetEase in Q1 was 14.9 billion yuan, an increase of 16.0% year-on-year, mainly due to the increase in online game revenue, such as "Egg Boy Party" launched in May 2022.

On September 19, through a "Tianmei Land Conference", Tencent revealed their new "trump card" in the field of party games - "Yuan Meng Star".

In addition to Tencent and Netease, emerging game manufacturers have also entered the game. Since the project was established in 2019 and the edition number was approved in April last year, Lilith CEO Wang Xinwen personally started the planning of "Life Party". In early September, Eagle Point officially announced the two-player co-op party game "Poumboum", which was available for demo play at the Nuclear Fusion Games Festival. The highly anticipated Beast Party was also released on September 20 and immediately topped the best-selling list in Steam.

The analysis report of digital marketing platform Digital Storytelling pointed out that Party Game, with its excellent social interaction and entertainment, has become a new trend that has attracted much attention in the game market in recent years. The research team found that the genre is leading the market with a growth rate of more than 150%, becoming the leader in the opportunity category in 2023.

The craze is surging

A new wave of craze began to surge from the beginning of 2023.

Since November 2022, the number of online users of "Goose and Duck Kill", a party game born from "werewolf killing", has skyrocketed, and after entering 2023, it has maintained a peak of more than 150,000 daily players per day, once rushing into the top ten of Steam's hottest game list, and soaring into the sky to become a phenomenal hit in the New Year.

In late January 2023, NetEase Games' casual competitive mobile game "Egg Boy Party" became popular. The mellow and cute fictional sphere character "Eggboy" uses skill parkour and derives two different game modes, "Survival" and "Racing", comparing the player's survival time and the time it takes to reach the end, and ranking them. Players can also use the officially provided scene materials to customize and design various UGC (User Generated Content) maps, which is widely regarded by the industry as the core gameplay of this game for a long time.

According to Qimai data, on January 13, 2023, "Egg Party" entered the top 10 of the overall iOS bestseller list for the first time, and has continued to this day. Excluding short fluctuation cycles, it remained in the first place in the "Games-Family Reunion" category for almost a long time in the past year.

Recently, the domestic indie game "Party Animals", which was already amazing with the demo version three years ago, finally landed on Steam, Xbox One and XSX/S platforms on September 20, and first joined Microsoft XGP subscription.

Developed by Recreate Games, an independent game studio led by former Hammer Technology design director Luo Zixiong and published by Source Technology, the game focuses on party social gameplay, players can choose different animal characters such as cats and dogs, and compete or cooperate in various arenas. The gameplay includes a variety of fun activities and challenges, such as boxing, football, basketball, etc.

While the sales and number of people online have repeatedly broken records, it has also encountered a "perfectionism" crisis due to high prices, few new additions, and bad in-game memes, which also made the market question its future development.

(Currently the mainstream party game in the market (2023.10.10).) Collation: 21st Century Business Herald Jiang Hongyi)

Above the water

Compared with traditional mainstream competitive games such as MOBA and FPS, Party Game does not have sustainable gameplay and an operation experience that can bring players a sense of honor, so it was not regarded as a potential track for domestic MOBA.

Why did party games suddenly catch fire at this point in time? How has the market environment and player demand changed?

In an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, a senior commentator in the game industry pointed out that it is precisely because of filling the gap and forming a new game experience that "Egg Party" continues to be popular. Especially when domestic game manufacturers generally dig deep in the direction of heavy games of "krypton gold hurts the liver", the "casual + social" style "Egg Boy Party" has become a "leisure place".

"This is essentially an inevitability, and after this game was released for a long time, it broke out during the Spring Festival, a period that particularly needs leisure, which also shows the existence and inevitability of this market demand." He said.

DataEye, a third-party data research institution, believes that combing through the popularity of "Egg Party", we can know that there are many accidental factors, but the inevitable factors can be learned: food, music, Q cuteness, and healing; Low threshold operation + high difficulty level mode; The freedom, originality, and communication potential brought by DIY maps.

In addition, its marketing ideas revolve around "operating core users in the early stage, and then waiting for opportunities to break the circle later", continuing to promote brand linkage + effect-based influencer marketing, and then stabilizing traffic increment by increasing live broadcasting, and this game is naturally suitable for live broadcasting, and the popular collection of joyful ornamentation, cute Q cute, random process is also quite immersive.

Gamma Data also pointed out in the "January 2023 Game Industry Report" that "Egg Party" performed better in the first quarter, in addition to its own casual competitive attributes and the high adaptability of the Spring Festival holiday, the construction of UGC ecology (user-generated content) is also one of the important factors to help its good performance.

Below the surface of the water

As more and more manufacturers enter the market, players are about to face a series of challenges under the crowded new outlet.

Judging from the recent situation of "Goose and Duck Kill", which was popular at the same time as "Egg Boy Party", the pain points of party games are obvious: as a casual category, there are no barriers to gameplay, any gameplay innovation can be borrowed by competitors, players have low loyalty to the game, social relationships do not depend on the game, and they can easily migrate between different games. At the same time, the fun of the game comes largely from the joy of sharing and playing with friends. And once the chain of relationship is broken, it is often not a player but a group that loses. This causes many games to fire up faster and cool faster.

NetEase Games' ambitions clearly don't stop there. After the release of Q4 and annual results in 2022, Ding Lei expressed his praise for "Egg Party" on the conference call, expecting its vitality to be as long as "Fantasy Westward Journey", and said that he would invest more research and development strength and operation to do a good job in the long-term service of "Egg Party", at least 10 years.

The long-term operation of "Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout", which is regarded as a "source of inspiration" by "Egg Party", may also be used as a reference for online party online game companies. The game was officially released on PS4 and Steam in August 2020, less than a month after its launch, publisher Devolver Digital announced that the game had sold more than 7 million copies on Steam, and also set a new record for the highest download of a free game for PSN members.

Interestingly, at the same time that the national server of "Egg Party" was launched, NetEase also sent it on the road to the sea non-stop. According to data from Dian Dian Dian Dian Dian , "Eggy Party" landed strongly in Southeast Asia in September and achieved excellent data performance. With more than 3.57 million downloads in the first month of its launch, the work ranked second on the Google Play download list, second only to Mu Pu Technology's "Endless Showdown". In longitudinal comparison, "Egg Party" was downloaded seven times more in September than in August, which also made the game 18th in China's overseas download list for the first time.

It is worth noting that as the bottom line issue of the development of online games in China, the topic of anti-addiction of minors in party games has also attracted regulatory attention, because its main user group is relatively young, mainly middle school students and college students. In September this year, the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Rights Protection Commission named a party game, pointing out that it had problems such as difficulty in refunding minors' consumption, anti-addiction loopholes such as "fast games" and "channel services", online begging, and bad practices of seeking adoption.

What's next for party games?

Zhang Shule believes that party games have long been popular abroad, and its typical is Ubisoft's crazy rabbit series, which has been popular for more than ten years and is new every year, and has replaced Ubisoft's Lehman IP and become Ubisoft's main IP, which shows that such games have strong vitality. The development of party games in the future may be more diverse, combined with various party gameplay experiences, gradually achieve the effect of social games, and even achieve party resonance in the real and virtual worlds through VR or AR technology.

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