UGC is an old topic that sucks. Many domestic projects have also tried to do UGC before, but few have succeeded.
The industry has always had doubts about whether to do UGC: first, UGC is not controllable and requires the team to invest a lot of resources to control, and second, the value that UGC can bring is also ambiguous - except for a few products, the market has not yet verified how much UGC can bring to products and users.
But "Egg Boy Party" has completed this verification: UGC has the ability to make products explode overnight.
Although many people attribute the success of "Egg Boy Party" to the Spring Festival bonus, the objective situation is that after the game completed several UGC optimizations in the second half of last year, it ushered in continuous growth and ushered in an explosion during the Spring Festival. Bonuses are common, but those who can be prepared are not.
Danzai's success in UGC has inspired many other NetEase teams, and even influenced the company's strategy. At this year's 520 press conference, NetEase specifically mentioned the "co-creation route", and many of its products are working on the development of level editors to encourage players to participate in content production.
A NetEase producer told me that many NetEase teams, including them, were inspired by "Egg Boy Party" and had the courage to dare to make big DAU products, "We used to think that the long-term was to do brand operation, but now we want to do more work on the R&D side, relying on UGC and users to do long-term design." ”
UGC, which has been sealed in the past, seems to have a very different value.
After dismantling the UGC design of "Egg Boy Party", I always feel that "Egg Boy Party" has actually jumped out of category competition and resource competition, so that even in the face of the same type of products, it can relax and believe in the position it has established by UGC. NetEase doesn't need to defend.
So, what is the difference between the UGC of "Egg Boy Party"? Why does it allow the product to achieve a counterattack? What does the UGC system that NetEase wants to replicate look like? We reorganized this product with "Egg Boy Party" 2023 Paradise Carnival and tried to answer these questions.
If you understand the reason why it became popular overnight by relying on UGC, even if you can't copy a "Egg Boy Party", you may be able to make a UGC system that can make you profitable.
01 What is Egg Waffle emphasizing?
On December 29, "Egg Boy Party" held the 2023 Park Carnival event.
This is an event with the theme of "Paradise". In addition to the "artisan eggs" who participated in the creation of the map in the past, the protagonists also have all the players who participated in the construction of the park's ecology. In the game's event trailer, Beaver Egg, which represents the UGC gameplay, is on the scene, and it highlights the special feature of this Egg Boy Island division: everything on the island comes from the player's construction.
Moreover, "Egg Boy Party" also showed off its muscles by the way: the game has more than 100 million maps this year, more than 20 million players have participated in map creation, a total of 200 million ordinary players have participated in the park play, and all park maps have received a total of 2.2 billion collections throughout the year, and the highest number of times a single map has exceeded 120 million......
At the bottom of the carnival-related promotional video, some players joked that according to the time node of "Egg Boy Party" due to the explosion of UGC, the park carnival held at the end of the year may be regarded as the real first anniversary of "Egg Boy Party".
This carnival is rich in content. The official distribution of carnival flyers in the game opened the "Paradise Time Train" that reviewed players' game experiences in the past year. On the day of the official opening of the carnival, Egg Boy Island will usher in a themed float parade, a central memorial pavilion, and a super craftsman booth and super craftsman vehicles on the island of the park carnival.
During the event, the game also has a puzzle gameplay, where all players who participate in the carnival will become a pixel in the annual group photo - your contribution to the park will be captured in a group photo and recognized......
But I think the most interesting thing is the construction of the Paradise Carnival Island. The building content has been recruiting players to participate in the creation since November.
According to the rules, the creators had to refine their past masterpieces and create a miniature scene that resembled a small bonsai. The works will be voted on and 500 booths will be selected. Whenever players enter the Carnival island, the system will randomly select 10 original artisan booths and 2 original craftsman vehicles to present on the sub-island for everyone to watch and interact with.
Unlike a complete map design, the production of the carnival's booth is very personal, as if looking back on their previous creative process, the creators make a summary of the past and then take the stage.
"Egg Boy Party" has always attached great importance to the status of UGC creators.
The beaver eggs that appeared at the Paradise Carnival correspond to the game's predecessor, the game editor "Project Beaver". The original intention of the "Beaver Project" is to allow users to participate in the creation of a low threshold and create a highly free original game community. Egg Boy Party continues this philosophy by encouraging players to take on the role of the creator and design original level content.
"Egg Boy Party" has been highlighting the UGC feature. During last year's closed beta test, the game continued to introduce the "Egg Boy Workshop" other than the party gameplay, using columns such as "Preserved Egg Classroom" and "Map Building Strategy" to teach players to use the UGC function to participate in creation, and in the ultimate test, a "Workshop Master List" was specially set up to reward players who participated in the creation.
"Egg Boy Party" pushed the creators to the front of the stage. As soon as the game was open beta, the official opened columns such as "This map is a bit of a cow" to show excellent works in the direction of UGC, and recommended many creators to players, such as @VCN who used any door to create "Doraemon's home", and @Eat Rice with level components to build "Boys and Girls Rush Forward Season 7" and others.
Subsequently, "Egg Boy Party" began to hold various UGC activities one after another, emphasizing the importance of UGC with incentive plans and university linkages. Less than three months after its launch, the game held its first Workshop Creation & Amway Competition, and in March of the following year, they held the first University "Circle Universe" Co-creation Competition, and jointly launched the "Egg Boy Party" Game Map Design Open Course with Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.
In June this year, on the occasion of the first anniversary, the game held its first creator conference. The official invited a large number of creators to the scene and let them share their creative process on stage. The seating ratio of creators to family members on site is close to 1:1. Many creators invited their relatives and friends to witness their moment of honor.
By this year's carnival, Egg Boy Party sent a clearer message: everyone who contributed to the game – creators or casual players – was the main character.
On the surface, "Egg Boy Party" is just encouraging creators to stand in front of the stage and then make the ecology bigger. But if it's just bigger, it's no different from those projects that have tried to do UGC in the past, which is not enough to explain why "Egg Boy Party" can become popular overnight by relying on UGC.
The real strength of "Egg Boy Party" UGC lies in the fact that while strengthening the status of creators, they have also quietly established a dialogue relationship between "product-creator-user": the creator performs on stage under the lights, the product makes a big stage behind the scenes, and the users applaud and shout encore.
02 Build a communication environment with UGC
What is the difference between the UGC created by Egg Boy?
Traditionally, the core strategy of the UGC ecosystem is to continue to invest, continue to grow, and then feed back the product. But the paradox is, how do you prove the value of this ecology to feed back to the product, and how do you calculate the ROI of building an ecosystem?
"Egg Boy Party" is different, it doesn't need to do self-proof, it treats UGC as part of the product from the beginning, and then builds a circular system of "official & creator & ordinary user" around it:
The first is the official responsible for opening up the creative space.
The vitality of UGC is linked to the scale of creation. In order to expand the scale of UGC, "Egg Boy Party" has adjusted its strategy in the past year and a half, which can be roughly divided into two parts, one is to lower the threshold for UGC creation, and the other is to increase creative freedom.
Lowering the bar is part of the ongoing iteration of Egg Boy Party. The game has been optimizing and introducing a variety of easy-to-use UGC creation tools to reduce the difficulty of level editing, and the Workshop's update list includes adjustments such as "limit the speed of dragging the map to reduce misoperation" and "increase the configurable parameters for composition".
This year, in order to improve the efficiency of creation and further lower the threshold for map production, the game has introduced AIGC technology. The new technology incorporates new functions such as "Universal Generator", "One-click Map Color Change" and "One-click Generation of Ancient Buildings", covering a number of scenarios to assist creation.
Increasing creative freedom is another point of "Egg Boy Party". "Egg Boy Party" has been enriching the components that can be used in the Egg Boy Workshop, or adding design parameters that can be changed, so as not to limit the creation of UGC as much as possible.
At the beginning of this month, the Egg Boy Workshop simply launched a new feature called "Egg Code". To put it simply, the "egg code" is to use the logic of approximate programming to support players to design the "events", "actions" and trigger "conditions" of the level like building blocks, which can land those difficult ideas.
In addition, "Egg Boy Party" also tries to hold themed map creation competitions, IP linkage, etc., to play the role of official guidance, telling players to create more content that jumps out of the original framework.
The second is the creators who are responsible for exploration.
"Egg Boy Party" has gradually jumped out of the category of party games. This is also due to the many design experiments that many creators have done with the platform's resources. At the one-year anniversary Creators Conference, some players mentioned that their motivation was to create designs that no one dared to think of.
These creations have a direct impact on the core gameplay. For example, before, the park map only had two modes: racing and survival, and players were eliminated and directly outed. The creator @Gollum Egg Cookies jumped out of the shackles of the mode and designed a brawl arena where everyone can respawn infinitely, continue to play, and use points to judge wins and losses.
At the same time, creators are pushing the boundaries of their products. Among the excellent UGC works released by the government, many of the creations are pure content expression, including "A Dream of Dunhuang" and "The Story of the Peach Blossom Spring" that emphasize traditional culture, "Qiming: Set Sail" and "The Life of Egg Boy Food" that do science fiction and biology popularization, as well as "Good Night Mr. Van Gogh" and "Borrowing Van Gogh's Stroke" and other works that do pure artistic expression.
And what's interesting is that even if there is no level design and content expression, those "Old Six" maps that play the effect of the show are also in line with the current communication style of short video content, and can become the communication point for "Egg Boy Party" to quickly create memes and attract more users......
The various types of UGC maps created by the creators have brought a large amount of game content to the product, ensuring that users have enough fresh content to consume, and also positively affecting the user stickiness of the product.
The third is the ordinary users who give feedback.
Feedback from regular players on products and UGC works is crucial. One creator once mentioned that the core reason why he chose to stick with his creation is that many users will recognize the work. Many creators have also gained a lot of fans in "Egg Boy Party" because of their excellent map design, and they have been urged by players to update.
The recognition given by ordinary users has prompted creators to continue to produce more high-quality content for "Egg Boy Party". This, in turn, has also made the average user develop a willingness to explore UGC content. A non-competitive player mentioned that he has developed a Xi habit of going to UGC every day to experience some new maps.
In the end, "Egg Boy Party" basically jumped out of the category of party games and became a social way for young people - through the UGC system, creators use map works to talk to ordinary players, and these map works have become an important platform for ordinary players with the same hobbies to identify each other.
So far, after more than a year of training, the above three have actually established a virtuous cycle system:
For the product, "Egg Boy Party" allows more players to become creators with a low threshold, and uses continuously optimized creative tools to allow creators to freely create the content they want to express. At the same time, the game uses various means to open up creators' minds, guide everyone to create designs that jump out of the box, and use a series of cash incentives to encourage creators to continue to create higher quality content.
For creators, they are undoubtedly content producers in the long-term operation of products, but more importantly, they are also explorers who broaden the boundaries of products. From "Egg Boy Party", they gained creative freedom, and then turned around to broaden the boundaries of the product, in fact, they are constantly pushing the product to improve the creative foundation of their UGC.
When it comes to ordinary players, they are attracted by the increasingly rich content of "Egg Boy Party" and the creators in the subdivided fields, who bring vitality to the product and the social ...... of acquaintances around them The recognition value given to creators by ordinary players also prompts the latter to continue to create here.
I think this virtuous circle system is the secret of the overnight explosion of "Egg Boy Party".
03 Relationship of trust
Looking back, the wisest decision made by NetEase and "Egg Boy Party" was to give UGC enough patience and time.
The dialogue relationship between the official, the creators, and ordinary players of "Egg Boy Party" is not something that can be built from the beginning, but depends on all parties listening to each other and then constantly iterating upwards to achieve it. Over time, the three have grown and iterated together, and in fact, a relationship of trust has been established.
——The official understands the needs of creators, iterates the "egg code", introduces AIGC, and gives creators generous cash incentives; creators believe in the creative freedom of Egg Boy Workshop and are willing to experiment to respond to the demands of ordinary players; ordinary players believe in products and creators, so they are also willing to explore product content and support creators for a long time.
This relationship of trust, over time, becomes a sense of companionship. This is also the most important verification result of the UGC system for the egg boy.
In the past, the sense of companionship was mostly the privilege of two-dimensional products. In the past, ACG products had a strong appeal because they could establish an emotional connection between players and characters in the simplest way, and build a solid long-term foundation for the product
"Egg Boy Party" breaks this privilege by proving that UGC can also create a similar emotional connection between a product and its users.
During this time, many people analyzed how "Egg Boy Party" played many defensive measures in the face of strong enemies...... If you want me to say, Egg Boy Party and its users have built a solid enough relationship and embarked on a very different direction from traditional party games and UGC.
Egg Boy Party's move is not so much about defense as it is about giving its users confidence that they have the ability to sustain this emotional connection.
So from this point of view, what "Egg Boy Party" reveals is not an opportunity for the party category, but a new way of thinking for the game industry to get along with users for a long time.
On the one hand, the industry does not have to be confined to the quality of derolling, as well as differentiated design, they can jump out of the traditional game design category, focus on systems such as UGC, and find more breakthrough solutions in the direction of serving users. On the other hand, the industry can jump out of the framework of the long-term road that can only make the brand bigger, and build a new research and operation system with users with the help of UGC.
At the very least, "Egg Boy Party" proves that this path is feasible, and it depends on how many people still have the patience to run in this direction.