Produced by Tiger Sniff Commercial Consumer Group
Author|Huang Qingchun
Visual China
NetEase finally waited for Tencent's accumulation of power.
In the past month (December 15, 2023 to January 15, 2024), the buying market, social platforms, and game streamers/game media have almost all fallen under the high-flying marketing offensive of "Yuan Dream Star":
- On the investment side, the finalized press conference proudly stated that "the first phase of ecological incentives will be invested 1.4 billion yuan, and there will be no cap on long-term investment", and more than 27,000 sets of purchased materials were put on the first day of launch, which was 50 times that of the pre-launch investment, and more than 600 celebrities were invited to promote it;
- On the linkage side, Channels, QQ, Tencent News and other traffic portals worked together to promote, 6 "Glory of Kings" co-branded fashions were given away for free, and the "Dream Partner" incentive plan was launched in conjunction with platforms such as Station B, Douyin, Douyu, Huya, Kuaishou, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu.
Data source: Diandian Data
TiMi and Tencent's major IPs are pushing together, and the outside world can clearly feel the importance that Tencent attaches to this game, and some media even call "Yuanmeng Star" "Tencent's next extremely important battle", or it will become its next "trump card".
However, the anomaly is that Tencent's "Dream Star" is not a long-dormant heavy self-developed masterpiece, but a party casual game that runs to enter the market - after two rounds of confidential testing, it quickly completed the first exposure (September 20), first test (September 28), second test (November 17), and public test (December 15) in more than three months, which is rare among domestic game manufacturers, not to mention as big as Tencent.
This makes people wonder: why does a party game make Tencent so serious and anxious?
Tiger Sniff believes that Tencent's pattern is no longer limited to the vision of a game company, and the reason why "Yuan Dream Star" has been elevated to the group strategy is to a greater extent that a certain trend and potential energy are loosening the entire Tencent's future development channel - "Egg Boy Party" uses the skin of the game to leverage the young market through UGC (User Generated Content) ecology, and truly touches the foundation of Tencent: the social relationship chain.
Following this logic, Tencent's above-mentioned actions are reasonable: Tencent's stability established in the past is loosening in the process of content and channel games, and "Yuanmeng Star" is no longer limited to a single game category, and Tencent is betting not only on a party game, but on the next generation of social scenes.
Why did Tencent smash the "party"?
Since NetEase's "Egg Boy Party" detonated the party track, the entire game circle knows that the dormant Tencent will make a move sooner or later.
On the one hand, according to the analysis of China Securities Securities, party games are essentially light multiplayer competitive games, which are prone to the birth of phenomenal DAU (Daily Active User) games due to their low threshold and fission propagation characteristics, while domestic casual games have reached more than 800 million users, but the supply of party games is still small, so it is a blue ocean track in the mobile game segment.
Moreover, Tencent has been coveting party games for a long time - previously, Tencent has laid out the party track through a number of external cooperation and investment, such as: investing in "Beast Party" developer Sosi Technology, cooperating with Nintendo to introduce Switch to China and any party games (such as "Mario Kart 8" and "Super Mario Party"), and Tencent-invested Epic Games also acquired Tonic Games, the parent company of Mediatonic, the developer of "Fall Guys Super Knockout", in 2021 Group。
QuestMobile data in June 2023, growth contribution rate = year-on-year increase in APP / year-on-year increase in the secondary market
On the other hand, "Egg Boy Party" has gradually pushed up DAU through the player UGC ecology - Tiger Sniff learned that in September 2023, NetEase's "Egg Boy Party" completed the "double 100 million achievement", that is, MAU (Monthly Active User) exceeded 100 million + the total number of maps accumulated 100 million, and as of December 2023, "Egg Boy Party" has more than 500 million registered users and 30 million DAU.
In view of this, "Yuan Dream Star" is intentionally or unintentionally targeting "Egg Boy Party" from the game category, launch time, and target audience, which can be called a precise sniping attack by Tencent against NetEase - on the day of the launch of "Yuan Dream Star", which was born with a golden spoon, not only WeChat and QQ spared no effort to set up the stage, but also B station, Douyin, Douyu, Huya, Kuaishou, Weibo, Xiaohongshu and other platforms also came to cheer, and won the first place on the App Store free list in two hours.
Generally speaking, there are two ways to launch a new game: "hot start" and "cold start". The survival of cold-start projects depends entirely on market data. "At the beginning, the cold-started "Glory of Kings" almost died, and it was called "Heroic Deeds" at the earliest, but the expectations were not so high when it was re-launched halfway, and a steep upward curve was drawn. People close to the "Glory of Kings" project said to Tiger Sniff.
As for the hot start, it is mostly accompanied by a grand press conference + traditional hard-core alliance channels (Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO, vivo and other app stores) + new live broadcast platforms (Douyin, Kuaishou) + old live broadcast platforms (Douyu, Huya) + community (B station, TapTap) to launch momentum - such a big battle, mainly due to the particularity of the "Yuan Dream Star" category: the party track is already a fully competitive field, the new product iteration speed is fast, and the hot start is conducive to occupying the minds of vertical users.
"There is another important reason for the carpet paving of "Yuan Dream Star", which involves the problem of sniping and counter-sniping between companies - the "Yuan Dream Star" press conference is not small, and the momentum will only be worse in the first week of launch, but NetEase, Lilith, Xindong, Eagle Horn and other game manufacturers are also pushing new games for the party, which is bound to rush to the launch time and media schedule, and Tencent must 'sweep the goods' in order to ensure high expectations for communication. A practitioner explained to Tiger Sniff that the logic of the carpet delivery of "Yuan Dream Star" is to ensure that it will not be exposed by competing cards such as "Egg Boy Party".
Now, it has been a month since the launch of "Yuan Dream Star", at least from the perspective of market performance, it is still competitive - according to the data of Diandian, in terms of iOS turnover, the total revenue of "Yuan Dream Star" from December 15 to January 15 was 138 million yuan (Tiger Sniff asked Tencent related people for verification, and the other party said that the actual data is more than that), exceeding the total income of 110 million yuan in the same period of "Egg Boy Party", and it has run a steep climbing curve in many new games.
Data source: Diandian Data
However, "Dream Star" has only been online for more than a month now, but "Egg Boy Party" has been running for 20 months (launched on May 27, 2022) - the latter has not only completed the market pattern, but also formed the minds of some users. Even, "Egg Boy Party" has become a phenomenal IP for party games.
In the face of such a situation, "Yuan Dream Star" chose to confront "Egg Boy Party" head-on, close hand-to-hand combat, even if Tencent invested resources with the power of the group, linked all the channels and platforms that could be mobilized, but the game was not a pile of resources to produce a hit, otherwise Tencent would not have been seven or eight years "Glory of Kings" is still a revenue trump card.
Moreover, "Fall Guys", "Goose and Duck Kill", "Egg Boy Party" and "Beast Party" are several representative party games that have their own advantages, and have carved up many party players in the market.
In this regard, a person close to Tencent IEG (Tencent Interactive Entertainment Business Group) analyzed the strategy of "Yuan Dream Star" to Tiger Sniff:
First of all, "Yuan Dream Star" positions the publicity direction as a "family game" - this is not a product that only targets the young market, "Yuan Dream Star" has set a more universal goal to target the whole user group and cover the whole circle;
"TiMi chose to put strong social and mainstream gameplay, including "Dream Star" and "Glory of Kings", "Crayon Xiaoxin", "Kung Fu Panda" and other head IPs to bind the brand mentality to more pan-users and pan-circles, and quickly attract the fan groups behind different IPs to convert into potential players of party games. An industry insider analyzed to Tiger Sniff.
It is equivalent to saying that in terms of strategy, "Yuan Dream Star" reserves a back hand, and also wants to penetrate some player groups that "Egg Boy Party" has not shaken, and target users of all ages to infiltrate them to become new increments.
DataEye, a third-party research organization, calculates the composition of users in the first month of "Metadream Star".
Secondly, the stitching ability of "Yuan Dream Star" is very "Tencent": the core gameplay of the game is the breakthrough mode, but it integrates the strengths of each family, and the shadow is enough to make players feel the shadow of eating chicken + QQ speed + CF + werewolf killing + king + Jelly Guys + egg boy party, and in the recent release of the "Mountain and Sea Adventure" new season preview shows that "Yuan Dream Star" plans to add rolling ball bumper cars, bubble wars, kart mode, and tower defense gameplay to the game - you know, "Yuan Dream Star" The integrated series of gameplay has led the trend, and after combining all these gameplay methods into one game, "Dream Star" is no longer just a party game, but closer to a game square.
"Party games are just a concept, or just a container, and there's no standard for what should be played in it. Starting from its definition, it is suitable for everyone to play together can be included in it, and the party has a great extension, and it definitely needs to be constantly explored. A game producer said to Tiger Sniff.
The above-mentioned producer further pointed out that in recent years, there are almost no new single ways to play in the game market (unless the changes brought about by technology), and new games are doing a variety of ways to stitch together - following this logic, the underlying logic of new games is a mathematical problem: what gameplay to capture a group of users, and what IP to capture a group of users. The difference is that some people have made this math problem subtraction, some have done addition, and some have even made multiplication.
"There is no one-size-fits-all formula for getting this math problem right (i.e., guaranteeing the success of the game), whether it should be subtracted, added or multiplied depends only on the product and the market. He emphasized that the domestic game industry is undergoing drastic changes in recent years, especially the obvious reshuffle of some large DAU products, and it is necessary to keep pace with the times in order to succeed.
A battle that Tencent cannot afford to lose
Tiger Sniff previously wrote that party games such as "Fall Guys: Ultimate Elimination", "Among Us" and "Goose and Duck Kill" have successfully verified the huge potential of social communication, and the reasons why "Egg Boy Party" came behind and successfully "broke through" the post-00s group are divided into two levels:
On the one hand, "Egg Boy Party" has come up with high-quality art design, superimposed on its relaxed and casual game rhythm, strong interactive game social gameplay (you can challenge racing, survival, individual points, team multi-theme levels, and at the same time combine two-player cooperation, 2v2 confrontation, asymmetrical competition and other gameplay), which has captured the hearts of many young players - these game scenes are undoubtedly a new "social currency" for post-00s who focus on self-expression and have a stronger sense of group identity.
QuestMobile calculates the age distribution of egg waffle users in June 2023
On the other hand, the UGC system derived from the "Egg Boy Workshop" in "Egg Boy Party" greatly broadens the boundaries of game exploration, not only providing players with the convenience of freely creating levels and self-made maps, but also fully mobilizing players' creative collision and more secondary content to share out of the circle.
Behind this is because there is an obvious change in party games, before the entire industry was casual and chess and other light games to complete user education, and then heavy games to complete the harvest, now the whole logic is different - you can also make light games heavy to complete the harvest, just like casual party games were originally low-sticky games, but the gameplay richness of "Egg Boy Party" and the whole game are becoming more and more complex, and casual parties can also be like heavy games.
Another change is that the difference between RMB players and ordinary players in "Egg Boy Party" and the game experience are not so big. Strictly speaking, "Egg Boy Party" is not a pure NetEase-style game - NetEase is good at large-payment design, while "Egg Boy Party" is a big DAU+ low payment threshold in terms of business model, and it is the path of "Glory of Kings", which has changed logically.
Taking NetEase's "Against the Cold" and "Naraka: Infinite" as examples, the characters' weapons and skins have circulation attributes, and the three-way transaction is often tens of thousands, and it mainly promotes the scarcity of explicit equipment, but "Egg Boy Party" mainly promotes fun and weakens the competitiveness - to a certain extent, the success of "Egg Boy Party" has given NetEase the opportunity to break through and reflect on its own ability range.
Based on the above analysis, if the success of "Egg Boy Party" is UGC first and the game is just a shell, then how "Yuan Dream Star" surpasses "Egg Boy Party" has become a proposition that Tencent Games must face - tricky, but very critical.
Looking back, after products such as "Crossfire", "League of Legends" and "Dungeons and Warriors" established Tencent's status in the PC era, it rode the social (WeChat & QQ) and entertainment territory in the wave of mobile games to ride the potential of social (WeChat & QQ) and entertainment territory - after Tencent Games identified several promising game categories, a large number of horse racing projects squeezed into these tracks to "gamble on explosive models", and were good at grafting group resources to their own business systems, and promoting products to achieve rapid growth in gameplay, technology and user ecology in different periods through investment, joint research and self-development.
Data source: Game Working Committee, Gamma Data
In addition, with the expansion of Tencent's game industry-wide investment territory, the channel potential has been inherited into the mobile game era, and it has rapidly established track control capabilities in MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena games) and shooting (including FPS/TPS/tactical competition, etc.).
At present, Tencent Games is facing internal and external troubles:
As far as Tencent is concerned, the two cash cows in its hand "Glory of Kings" have been in operation for more than 8 years, "Peace Elite" has been online for nearly 5 years, and the chicken gameplay has been popular for more than 7 years since it exploded in 2017, but the entire IEG has been unable to come up with a new hit to take over the baton, and the two-dimensional trend led by "Genshin Impact" in 2020 and the party trend led by "Egg Boy Party" in early 2023 are all passively followed, and Tencent has long been anxious.
In terms of external competition, rising stars such as miHoYo ("Genshin Impact"), Lilith ("Awakening of Kingdoms"), Mutong Technology ("Mobile Legends: Bang Bang"), IGG ("Lords Mobile"), and Habby ("Legend of the Bow and Arrow") have occupied the top spot in sub-categories through a product with hundreds of millions of turnover, and even achieved good turnover in the global market, while Tencent has become more and more passive in leading new categories.
Moreover, the old rival NetEase is further strengthening deterrence through new games, just taking the summer of 2023 as an example, GameLook statistics show that NetEase ("Against the Cold Mobile Game", "Egg Boy Party", "Peak Speed", "All-Star Street Ball Party") 4 new games eat more than 40% of the new game market, while Tencent ("Maple: The Legend of Maple"), Byte ("Crystal Nucleus"), and miHoYo ("Star Rail") The new game turnover of the three giants only accounts for more than 30% of the new game market.
The situation is like this, Tencent naturally sees it in its eyes and is anxious in its heart - so, with the power of the group, it launched the "Yuan Dream Star" positive "tough" "Egg Boy Party", if this "one shot" is dumb, Tencent's morale will inevitably suffer a heavy setback - therefore, "Yuan Dream Star" has become a battle that Tencent Games cannot lose.
Of course, there is no shortage of game practitioners who are optimistic about the next market performance of "Yuan Dream Star", after all, casual competition + big DAU is Tencent's strength, but people close to Tencent IEG said that "Yuan Dream Star" has no DAU target now:
- On the one hand, the growth and accumulation of party games is a long-term cyclical work, and it is difficult to "determine life and death" in the short term after it is launched.
- On the other hand, Tencent Games' various businesses have diverse playing styles and different expected goals, so it is difficult to determine the evaluation criteria.
The above-mentioned person further reiterated that Tencent IEG (including TiMi Studio Group, Photon Studio Group, Rubik's Cube Studio Group, and Northern Lights Studio Group) has its own layout and business promotion rhythm for entering new categories, and it is not intended to benchmark "Egg Boy Party" as the outside world said. "Tencent's style will not catch up with a wave of popularity in a certain category or gameplay in the market; when a certain gameplay becomes popular, it will pay close attention to market changes and invest in some start-up teams in the early stage, and some projects in the later stage are also based on market judgment, business needs, and meeting players. ”
#我是虎嗅商业. Huang Qingchun, deputy head of the consumption and mobility group, pays attention to entertainment and social networking, games, video and other fields, and industry professionals communicate with WeChat: 724051399, and news clues can also be emailed to [email protected]
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