Author |Pang ruijin
Edit |Hu zhanjia
In the recent game circle, the most eye-catching is undoubtedly the party game war between Tencent’s Dream Star and Netease’s Egg Party. Previously, Zero-state LT (ID: Lingtai _ LT) made a detailed interpretation of this in the article "Ren Yuxin’s" Opening Ding Lei ":The Star of the Dream of the Yuan Dynasty must not be guarded by the Iron Throne | Interpretation of Ten Thousand Words".
Now that three months have passed, what is the situation between the two sides?
Players who have paid attention to these two games clearly know that the indicators of Yuan Meng Xing are obviously behind those of Egg Party at present. Let’s see what happened in these three months.
The annual meeting named "Yuan Meng Xing"
Ma Huateng explained the reason for "going all out"
On January 29th, at the annual meeting of Tencent in 2023, Ma Huateng, Chairman and CEO of Tencent, spent 35 minutes reviewing in detail the development of Tencent’s businesses in the past year and made plans for the future.
Among them, when talking about the game business, Ma Huateng focused on "Dream Star":
"Games are our trump card business. At present, it is known as the world’s largest game company, and it seems to be lying on the credit book of success.
However, in the past year, we have been greatly challenged. The new generation of game companies have emerged one after another. From the gameplay to the content category, we are at a loss for a while, and friends keep producing new products. We feel as if we have made no achievements-we have also launched new products, but they are not as good as expected.
In the last two months, the leisure family party game "Yuan Meng Xing" has just entered the battlefield.
Although it is late, it is not only a game for us, but also has a social component. This is our base camp position in itself, and we must go all out and ask all businesses to combine and explore common development. "
Ma Huateng delivered a speech at the Tencent Annual Meeting in 2023.
Ma Huateng’s statement shows that Dream Star bears the ambition of Tencent, the company’s next rival in the game field, the glory of the king or Peace Elite.
From this, we can also know that the main reason why Dream Star was promoted to Tencent Group’s strategy is that the product and traffic combination model of Tencent’s core battlefield "game+social relationship chain" is being challenged-UGC social game "Egg Party" wearing an entertainment coat is rapidly becoming popular in the social field of acquaintances and strangers of teenagers, and it has achieved a monthly life of over 100 million in just one and a half years, and gained 500 million registered users, directly entering Tencent’s social base camp.
But at the same time, Ma Huateng also criticized that the game business can’t lie on the credit book. Compared with the new products of friends, tencent games’s business lacks bright products.
Ma Huateng’s dissatisfaction has its own reasons: according to the financial report data, tencent games got a rough start in 2023, especially local games: Q1 revenue was about 35.1 billion yuan, up 6% year-on-year; In Q2, it dropped to 31.8 billion yuan, down about 9.4% from the previous month. The domestic market revenue of Q3 games increased by 5% year-on-year to 32.7 billion yuan, but the growth rate was far behind that of the international market by 14%.
Judging from the PPT of Tencent’s annual meeting circulated on the Internet, Ma Huateng refers to the new products of friends, mainly referring to Netease’s "Going Against the Water" mobile game and "Egg Party", which set off the banner of new travel and even sent Netease to the fourth place in the market value of Internet companies, as well as the "Collapse: Star Dome Railway" launched by Mihayou, which can succeed "The Original God".
The PPT at Tencent’s annual meeting was transmitted online, in which competitors’ new products, such as Netease’s "Going Against the Water" mobile game and "Egg Party" and Mihayou’s "Collapse: Star Dome Railway", performed brilliantly.
In contrast, almost all the new products launched by Tencent in 2023 were eclipsed. The only bright spot was Yuan Meng Xing, which Tencent bet on the resources of the whole group, and it needed to compete directly with Netease’s Egg Party. This is a hard and protracted war, and even if Tencent goes all out, it may not be able to achieve its strategic goals.
Hundreds of people’s "Egg Party" suppressed thousands of people’s "Yuan Meng Xing"
Netease got revenge for the chicken-eating war.
Tencent’s emphasis on Dream Star is almost unprecedented.
On the research and development level, as a strategic product, Yuan Meng Xing was personally created by Z1 Studio led by Yao Xiaoguang, president of Tianmei Studio Group, the most powerful subsidiary of Tencent IEG.
Because Yao Xiaoguang is also the head of social platform business of Tencent PCG, and is in charge of QQ, Yuan Meng Xing was originally named as "ZPLAN", which is a one-dimensional universe project exploration focusing on games and social orientation. After a period of exploration of super QQ show, with the fire of Netease’s Egg Party, it evolved into the final form of Yuan Meng Xing as a competing product to meet players.
When ZPAN was first exposed, it was rumored that Tianmei had set up a team of more than 1,000 people, working in Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai, and Tianmei also had R&D team members from several other studios involved. According to an internal employee of Tencent IEG, the entire Tianmei studio group, except L1 and L2 (studios mainly responsible for the glory of the king and the glory of the king: The World), has helped to participate in the research and development of Yuan Meng Xing, "grabbing people everywhere, and the workstation can’t sit down".
On the marketing level, the first wave of marketing offensive has been fierce since the launch of Dream Star on December 15th. On December 2, 2023, Tencent not only announced the official launch time of the game, but also announced in a high-profile manner that it would invest 1.4 billion yuan in the first phase, without capping the long-term investment, more than 600 heads of KOL waving flags, and Tencent poured all the resources of the whole group to help, which made Yuan Meng Xing show the appearance of the opening king. As soon as it appeared, it overtook Egg Party in both the download list and the best-selling list.
Similarly, Netease attaches unprecedented importance to Egg Party. Ding Lei, CEO of Netease, said in early 2023 that Netease would continue to invest more R&D power and management resources in Egg Party, making it a product with 10 or even 20 years of vitality like Fantasy Westward Journey. To this end, Ding Lei broke the convention and stared at the game project personally, not only asking questions, but even being willing to participate.
However, according to the latest report, there are only about 100 people in the team behind "Egg Party", which can’t be compared with "Dream Star". However, under Netease’s strong defensive strategy, Yuan Meng Xing only beat Egg Party for 20 days in the best-selling list, and then entered a stalemate stage for about a week, and then Egg Party began to overtake Yuan Meng Xing, which led Ma Huateng to criticize the game business mercilessly at Tencent’s 2023 annual meeting and explained why he should go all out to do Yuan Meng Xing.
Below, we can re-examine the process of engagement between the two sides from the data and time nodes published in Egg Party and Dream Star:
It is understood that "Egg Party" became popular during the Spring Festival in 2023, with a maximum income of over 10 million per day and a maximum daily activity of over 30 million, and continued to top the iOS game list within one month. On September 7, 2023, Netease announced in a high-profile way that "Egg Party" had achieved an unprecedented "double-billion achievement"-that is, MAU (monthly active users) exceeded 100 million+the total number of maps totaled 100 million. On December 8, Netease announced that the cumulative number of registered users of Egg Party exceeded 500 million.
On December 15th, Tencent’s Dream Star was launched, and the two sides launched an offensive and defensive war of marketing purchase. For the results, the outside world can only analyze the gains and losses of both sides from the changes in various lists.
Originally, Yuan Meng Xing dominated the Egg Party in both the best-selling list and the download list, but on January 1st, the Egg Party achieved a short-term overtaking, and from January 11th, Yuan Meng Xing has been behind the Egg Party in the best-selling list (Ma Huateng’s speech at Tencent’s annual meeting was in this period), and it was not until March 15th that the new season started that it overtook the Egg Party.
Comparison of the Best-seller Rankings of Yuan Meng Xing and Egg Party
Comparison of Download Rankings between Yuan Meng Xing and Egg Party
On January 25th, 2024, the creative team of Yuan Meng Xing released a "Letter to All Players of Yuan Meng Xing" through Weibo, official WeChat official account and other channels, in which some data performances since the launch of the product were disclosed for the first time-in less than one month after the launch of Yuan Meng Xing on December 15th, 2023, the number of registered players exceeded 80 million.
Tencent officially announced that the number of registered users of Yuan Meng Xing exceeded 80 million in the first month of its launch.
Then, on February 2, 2024, the Egg Party sent a happy news called "Egg Victory Ceremony" to the players in the game, saying that "we won again", and announced that the daily play times of Egg Paradise exceeded 100 million, 400,000+content creations were added every day, an average of 3.8 paradise maps were born every second, and the game had 20 million+creative partners with love and like-mindedness.
Next, Netease officially announced that the DAU (daily active users) of Egg Party on New Year’s Eve exceeded 40 million, and after the first day of the New Year’s Day, Dream Star was overtaken by Egg Party in the download list, and the gap between the two sides was rapidly widened during the whole Spring Festival file-data points, as of February 15, Egg Party was in China App Store for nearly 30 days.
Netease announced on the first day of New Year’s Eve that "Egg Party" will live more than 40 million days.
However, Yuan Meng Xing has not yet released all the data during the Spring Festival, but what is certain is that both DAU and Liushui are far lower than Egg Party, so Tencent’s offensive campaign for the Spring Festival has not won, but has been completely surpassed by Netease. So, how does Netease arrange the "Egg Party" to keep rolling?
Originally, Egg Party announced that it would invest 500 million yuan to encourage the creation of UGC content, but Dream Star announced that it would spend 1.4 billion yuan to encourage the creators of UGC in the first stage before it went online, and the subsequent investment would not be capped. After entering 2024, "Egg Party" quickly followed up and announced the opening of the annual plan of "10 billion subsidies to give back eggs". The first step was to double the original incentive of 500 million yuan to 1 billion yuan, and even provide employment opportunities.
At the beginning of 2024, Netease announced the opening of the annual plan of "10 billion subsidies to give back eggs"
Netease’s strategy of spending a lot of money has achieved results. Egg Party not only continued the popularity of last year’s Spring Festival, but even promoted DAU from 30 million during last year’s Spring Festival to 40 million on New Year’s Eve this year. However, the performance of Dream of the Yuan Dynasty has gone from bad to worse, which can only be explained as the struggle between two tigers is bound to hurt …
It can be said that this war not only failed to repeat the history of the "chicken-eating war" between Netease and Tencent five years ago, but also allowed Netease to report the "revenge with one arrow" for the defeat in the chicken-eating market five years ago.
Spring Festival marketing war
Who is better?
Kwan, the producer of Egg Party, said in an interview with foreign media mobilegamer.biz recently that the success of Egg Party depends not on huge purchases, but on effective promotion and marketing with UGC as the core, and the promotion of Egg Party depends on players and communities. For example, in January, the Tik Tok account of "Egg Party" rose by 13.84 million yuan, of which 10.28 million yuan rose in a week through the Spring Festival theme activities, which overwhelmed Dong Yuhui, and now it generates billions of views every month.
From January 22 to January 28, 2024, Egg Party gained more than 10.28 million yuan in a week through the theme activities of the Spring Festival.
On the other hand, the recent defeat of Yuan Meng Xing made Tencent fail to win the "king" position of the party game track. Is it a strategic mistake of Tencent, or is its strategy too conservative? And we can see the whole leopard from the fierce confrontation between the two sides in the Spring Festival stalls.
Actually, Ma Huateng didn’t arrive at the Spring Festival when he spoke at Tencent’s annual meeting. However, due to the family-friendly nature of Yuan Meng Xing and the fact that Egg Party was popular during the Spring Festival holiday last year, both players and practitioners regarded Yuan Meng Xing’s efforts in the Spring Festival as a time window and opportunity for Yuan Meng Xing to regain the situation, and Yuan Meng Xing also opened on January 26th.
During the whole Spring Festival of 2024, Tencent and Netease further "made a big fight" around the game Spring Festival welfare, celebration activities, star power, IP linkage, UGC content and so on. All kinds of marketing inside and outside the game are pervasive, and the marketing methods adopted by each party can almost find targeted countermeasures in the other party, such as:
"Egg Party" invited Andy as the spokesperson, while "Dream of the Yuan Dynasty" invited Adam, YUQI and Daxun Wei; "Egg Party" is linked with bears, while "Yuan Meng Xing" is linked with brands such as Altman and Milk Dragon. "Egg Party" carries out IP linkage with the Forbidden City to watch the Tang Dynasty, and promotes the traditional culture through innovative scene presentation and interesting cultural relics play. "Dream of the Yuan" is linked with several brands, such as Juewei Duck Neck, Haidilao, Luckin Coffee, Laiyifen Snacks, the GreenParty and Clever, to create offline stores and online games, so as to enlarge the influence of games in users’ real life.
During the Spring Festival, "Egg Party" also achieved the feat of covering hundreds of cities online through 43 Spring Festival temple fairs in 33 cities in 15 provinces, plus 154 egg friends’ encounters and some punching activities. "Dream of the Yuan Dynasty Star" launched a variety of linkage products offline, including "Star Treasure" dolls launched in cooperation with the Green Party and other brands, physical collection cards in cooperation with Aofei Entertainment, and even limited-edition "Dream of the Yuan Dynasty Star" theme fireworks products launched in cooperation with Liuyang Fireworks …
During the Spring Festival, the official of Egg Party actively arranged the offline Spring Festival temple fair activities.
A limited edition theme fireworks product jointly launched by Yuan Meng Xing and Liuyang Fireworks.
The most noteworthy thing about this is that the two sides take turns to board the Spring Festival Evening or other parties, which is very likely that you will sing and I will appear-
In fact, the first to start the cooperation mode between the game and the mainstream party is Yuan Meng Xing —— On the evening of December 31st, 2023, an adaptation song of "Family Fun" from Yuan Meng Xing named "Dream Together and Find Yourself" boarded "Sailing 2024—— New Year’s Eve Party of CCTV". When introducing the program, the host also specifically mentioned "Thanks to Tianmei Studio Group for their strong support to this program. Gather good friends anytime, anywhere. Dream star, let’s go to happiness together! "
The adaptation song "Dream Together" of "Dream of the Yuan Dynasty" appeared in the New Year’s Eve party of CCTV Headquarters.
Perhaps Netease was inspired by the linkage mode of game and party cooperation initiated by Tencent, so it planned a series of linkages between Egg Party and mainstream parties during the Spring Festival-first, Happy Birthday, which was adapted from the theme song of the seventh season of Egg Party on February 2nd, won the CCTV 2024 network Spring Festival Evening. For this party, CCTV’s four channels broadcasted 12 times in a row, and the whole network broadcast volume exceeded 1.5 billion. Then, on February 7th, the seven opera styles of Egg Party were even more stunning, and they appeared in the 2024 Henan Spring Festival Evening hosted by Henan Satellite TV. Many people were amazed by the combination of reality and drama art and expressive force.
"Egg Party" won the CCTV Headquarters’ 2024 Internet Spring Festival Gala on New Year’s Eve with "Happy Birth" adapted from the theme song of the seventh season.
"Egg Party" appeared in the 2024 Henan Spring Festival Gala hosted by Henan Satellite TV.
Netease was not satisfied with the Spring Festival Evening of CCTV and local TV respectively. On New Year’s Eve, it also held the 2024 Spring Festival Evening of Egg Island in the game, and built a new cyber New Year’s Eve with young players in three "Spring Festival Evening".
"Egg Party" held the 2024 Egg Island Spring Festival Evening in the game.
Pay attention! ! ! I’m the most beautiful egg in the Spring Festival, and I’m going to connect to three "Spring Festival Galas"!
After boarding the three Spring Festival Galas in succession, The Egg Party really attracted the attention of the mainstream network to a certain extent, and brought a very effective circle-breaking effect. According to statistics, on the three social platforms of Weibo, Tik Tok and bilibili, "Egg Party" generated eight related hot searches during the Spring Festival.
After boarding these three Spring Festival Galas in succession, there were eight related hot searches made by Egg Party during the Spring Festival.
As a direct competitor of Egg Party, Yuan Meng Xing was caught off guard by Netease’s Spring Festival Evening offensive for a time. After returning to work after the Spring Festival, the Yuan Meng Xing project team quickly reached a second cooperation with CCTV. This cooperation is to let "Yuan Meng Xing" broadcast the CCTV Lantern Festival live, and let the host read such a slogan simply and directly:
"Next, welcome everyone to" Yuan Meng Xing ".You can watch the Lantern Festival party and participate in solve riddles on the lanterns activities through the genuine family party APP or WeChat QQ Yuan Meng Xing applet. You can also get permanent’ fashion’ and’ lantern lights’! "
"Yuan Meng Xing" directly chose to cooperate with CCTV Lantern Festival.
However, this is also the advantage that Yuan Meng Xing with built-in Tencent video is more inclined to use Tencent’s resources to create a "small meta-universe" compared with Egg Party. Previously, Dream of the Yuan Dynasty used a projector in the Star Home to let users watch Tencent videos in the game, but this time, Dream of the Yuan Dynasty directly set up a new big screen in the middle of the Star Dream Square, so that all players can watch the live broadcast of CCTV Lantern Festival here.
"Star of Dreams" directly set up a new big screen in the middle of "Star Dream Square" to broadcast the CCTV Lantern Festival live.
This time, "Dream of the Yuan Dynasty" was presented in a live online interactive way: CCTV host and "Dream of the Yuan Dynasty" invited the audience in front of the scene and TV to solve riddles on the lanterns together; In the live broadcast, Xingbao showed riddles and did enough interaction; Finally, the host invited everyone to go to solve riddles on the lanterns in Yuan Meng Xing.
The host of CCTV and Yuan Meng Xing invited the audience in front of the TV to solve riddles on the lanterns together.
The way in which "Dream of the Yuan Dynasty Star" linked with the party was a concrete presentation of the "super digital scene" proposed by Ma Xiaoyi, senior vice president of Tencent a few years ago. When modern technology meets traditional festivals, as the only "Little Metauniverse" live broadcast scene of CCTV Lantern Festival, it not only embodies innovation, but also deepens the integration and communication of "thought+art+technology", allowing the public to feel the fresh experience brought by digital technology while celebrating the festival.
The live broadcast of "Dream Star" to the 2024 CCTV Lantern Festival is a concrete presentation of "super digital scene"
It is also the linkage with the live broadcast of the CCTV Lantern Festival that made Yuan Meng Xing, which dropped to 42 on the best-selling list, jump to 16th on the best-selling list on the Lantern Festival, which raised the income curve. Although it still can’t catch up with Egg Party, this wave of Lantern Festival offensive can be regarded as a hope for further counterattack of Yuan Meng Xing in the future.
However, the income curve of Yuan Meng Xing declined further, and it fell out of the top 50 of the best-selling list for the first time on March 7, which has already declared Yuan Meng Xing’s defeat in this round of the Spring Festival party game war. However, Tencent has not given up "Dream Star", and is currently preparing for the next big version of the content update, when a new round of party game showdown will be ushered in.
On February 29th, Netease released the financial report for the fourth quarter and the whole year of 2023. Although it set the best performance in history (revenue exceeding 100 billion for the first time and profit exceeding 30 billion for the first time), the Q4 revenue and profit were not as good as the market expectation, which led to the decline of Netease’s share price. Behind the decline of Netease Q4′ s performance, one is the lack of new games, and the other is to block "Dream Star". Netease has greatly increased its marketing expenses.
Ding Lei, the boss of Netease, commented on this: "The increase in marketing expenses in the fourth quarter is mainly due to competition. I think this is normal. During the Spring Festival this year, the number of daily active users of Egg Party exceeded 40 million, indicating that the marketing expenses we spent have received positive and positive results. The proportion of market expenses next year will not change much compared with this year. We are still very strict in the management of market expenses, and we have been actively exploring various methods to effectively improve the return on investment, so I believe that there is no need to worry about it from the operational point of view. "
In 2024, Netease’s investment in "Egg Party" is still increasing. For example, Netease’s annual plan of "10 billion subsidies to give back eggs" is intended to send 10 billion yuan in 2024. However, at present, Netease has paid a lot of money to block Yuan Meng Xing. After all, under the fierce attack of Tencent, Egg Party successfully suppressed Yuan Meng Xing in the double list (download list and best seller list) throughout the Spring Festival, and has maintained its advantages to this day. Even Yuan Meng Xing has surpassed the mobile game "Against the Water" and "Fantasy Westward Journey".
UGC content ecological moat is too deep
"Yuan Meng Xing" is hard to shake the user disk of "Egg Party"
Party games are inherently leisure and social, with low game threshold and strong social attributes. In fact, they have become the social currency of young people and can be called a new generation of "family fun games".
In the initial online stage of Yuan Meng Xing, as a new product, the game, together with Tencent’s call for more than 600 online celebrity to help out and large-scale purchase marketing, once made the growth rate and increment of Yuan Meng Xing exceed that of Egg Party, but with the user growth rate and increment of Yuan Meng Xing, it was exhausted, so it still could not swallow the stock market of Egg Party after one month.
During the Spring Festival, people will have a lot of leisure time, and large-scale population migration activities have also created conditions for the popularization of party games. Therefore, as the highlight moment of party games, the Spring Festival file is a severe test for Tencent and Netease. Therefore, both Tencent and Netease took the Spring Festival file as the stage of the second round of the party game war. However, in this fierce marketing war of the Spring Festival file of the party game, Yuan Meng Xing not only failed to shake the first-Mover advantage of Egg Party, but even further widened the gap.
Now Tencent and Netease have been fighting for three months, and both sides realize that this is not the battle of Tianwangshan, which can be done quickly, but will be a protracted war like a seesaw. Then, how can Yuan Meng Xing reverse the decline of "opening higher and walking lower"? Since big money marketing cannot reverse the situation, perhaps Tencent should make changes from the product level.
Party games are for young people, and the target users should be young people. The Star of Dreams wants to be a national leisure game of "Xian Yi for all ages" and replicate the success of the glory of the king. For this reason, Tencent integrated biochemical pursuit, Grandmaster at Arms, hide-and-seek, breaking through Neverland, Who is a werewolf, undercover action, etc. into Yuan Meng Xing, in an attempt to build a QQ game hall with party attributes and provide players with more choices.
Various ways of playing in Yuan Meng Xing
However, the recent data decline of Yuan Meng Xing also shows that the game with the goal of "Xian Yi for all ages" and "all ages" is probably a false proposition. Yuan Meng Xing wants to be a family fun game for users of all ages in product positioning, but the result that any group wants to do it may be that every group can’t do it well. If a player says that in the werewolf killing mode, the experience of single player matching and team matching is completely different, Tencent chose to sacrifice the game experience of single player in order to match the traffic of team matching.
On the Zhihu, the discussion about the declining popularity of Yuan Meng Xing has also become a hot topic. "How do you think that the popularity of" Yuan Meng Xing "has been greatly reduced after one month of service?" It has been viewed more than 2.18 million times, among which many game practitioners actively express their opinions.
According to the game planner "The Magician Cat is Extraordinary", when a homogeneous competing game appears, players tend not to play this homogeneous competing game because the original sinking cost is too high, for example, a lot of time and money spent before the game, various props accumulated in the game, and accumulated social relationships.
"The Magician Cat is Extraordinary" also compares the failure of many game products that follow the strategy, such as the glory of the king, and thinks that products that are essentially homogeneous can’t attract players to abandon sunk costs and throw themselves into the embrace of new products, unless Dream Star is "much better, good enough to make you willing to give up the old games you played before", otherwise, before Netease’s Egg Party doesn’t make any fatal mistakes,
The game industry analyst "Du Li Ren" thinks that "Yuan Meng Xing" lost in Goose Factory and didn’t realize that party games/family fun games/leisure competitive games/Sugar Bean People like games can make a big DAU product in China market. However, under this throne track, if the first-hand advantage is lost, the cost and difficulty of catching up will still be unbearable even for Goose Factory.
"DuDu Chestnut" also added that if the success of "Egg Party" is an ancient god-level splash of wealth because the product mispronounced the spell, then the current failure of "Star of Dreams" is the inevitable result of Don Quixote’s challenge to the throne windmill. From the marketing behavior of Goose Factory, we can see that the idea of launching the whole product reveals a sense of despair and fatalism that going out without proper sword has been besieged by six sects of Guangmingding.
In fact, two users in Zhihu, who are practitioners in the game industry, believe that the failure of Dream of the Yuan Dynasty lies in the loss of the first-hand advantage as a follower, and the migration cost is involved when users switch to new products after paying a certain sunk cost. From the game design point of view, Yuan Meng Xing, which stands on the giant’s shoulders, is not because the product is not good enough, but because the UGC community has already formed before the Egg Party, and the corresponding users’ minds, emotions, culture and socialization are difficult to be successfully copied by the latecomers.
Maybe someone will refute the case of Netease’s chicken-eating war that Tencent’s post-production team won five years ago, but if we make a detailed reply, the situation faced by these two wars is different:
First of all, Netease’s "Wild Action" was less than half a year ahead of Tencent’s mobile game of eating chicken. Although the daily active users exceeded 20 million, the user relationship chain has not yet settled, and the sinking cost of users abandoning the game is not high. The game of eating chicken belongs to the competitive battle category that Tencent has always been good at. Players are more accustomed to using Tencent’s traffic based on WeChat and QQ and the user’s social relationship chain to open black, not to mention Tencent also owns the copyright of genuine chicken-eating games. In addition, internal Tianmei and Photon are also engaged in horse racing, and the two studios have been deeply involved in the shooting game track for many years, and they are ahead of Netease in polishing and restoring the details of the products. Finally, before the game version number was obtained, Tencent directly killed Netease’s chicken eating game by operating two chicken eating products for more than one year at a loss.
In addition, in terms of product quality, Netease’s Wilderness Action is also one level worse than Tencent Photonics Studio’s Jedi Survival: Stimulating the Battlefield. Netease uses its own engine Messiah to develop, and the picture quality and operation feel are not enough. Tencent uses unreal engine 4, which is consistent with the end-game "Survival of the Jedi", and restores the game experience anchored by the end-game to the greatest extent. In addition, Netease’s accumulated experience in shooting game track is far from Tencent’s, and the route of photon selection to restore the end-game has also defeated the innovative route of mobile games chosen by Tianmei. In the end, "Jedi Survival: Stimulating the Battlefield" successfully ate the "chicken" from the melee of many mobile games.
Ma Xiaoyi, senior vice president of Tencent, once commented on Tencent’s winning the chicken-eating war: "When the door of a market segment has not yet been opened, it needs enough strength, that is, good enough products and sufficient resources, to push the door open. For example, some people started shooting games in China in 2004, and Tencent only started doing them in 2008. The ultimate success is those who achieve quality, get a good solution in key gameplay, understand the core of this game, and build the surrounding ecology based on the core, so that such products can finally be. " It can be seen that if you want to open a new game category, quality must be the premise, which is more important than speed and traffic. If you are not a pioneer, you will definitely win. Obviously, the quality of Operation Wilderness, which was half a year ahead in the starting stage at that time, was not enough to create a chicken-eating category in mobile games with a strong attitude.
However, the deeper reason is that the user demand of competitive war games is different from that of party games. The user demand of chicken-eating games lies in being able to quickly team up with acquaintances and friends and match strangers with the same level, while the user demand of party games is based on the content ecological interaction of UGC.
The social relationship chain based on acquaintances is the biggest advantage of Tencent’s entry into the game field, and Tencent is also good at accurately matching users with similar competitive level, especially under the premise that Tencent already has the successful case of the glory of the king, so the biggest advantage of Jedi Survival: Stimulating the Battlefield is that it can make many players match in a short time, and there are a large number of robots in the low sub-bureau, so that many players with poor skills can also get a very good game experience, which effectively guarantees the players.
However, the moat of UGC content ecology is deeper than the social relationship chain and user matching mechanism. In this respect, Tencent has not had a particularly successful product case so far, let alone being able to achieve a latecomer. Of course, when it comes to content and community genes, Tencent is also indispensable, and casual games are Tencent’s strengths. What Tencent needs to do now is to come up with an original explosion phenomenon-level new tour and be a leader rather than a follower. In the long-term competition of party games in the future, tencent games also urgently needs a successful explosive product to boost its morale, to prove that it understands and can catch young people.
Nowadays, Egg Party has evolved from a single game to a platform product. With massive user resources, high-quality maps and a large number of game anchors, Egg Party continues to generate word-of-mouth and brand influence, and fully expands the content ecology of UGC through a benign snowball-like positive cycle.
Kwan, the producer of Egg Party, told foreign media that Egg Party was originally established as a UGC project, so it is not just a party game. "Other party games usually rely on the development team to create most levels and game mechanisms. However, in Egg Party, we believe in one principle: players are the most creative people and have unlimited potential. Therefore, Egg Party attaches great importance to UGC. The core of UGC is to lower the threshold for the use of editors. "
Kwan admits that the first day of Egg Party was not popular because it takes time for players to create and share levels. "In fact, the development of Egg Party in China market is not smooth. We experienced days of low morale and confusion. However, by persisting in constantly improving the UGC experience, we have gradually won the recognition and support of the majority of players. " Kwan said, "So far, more than 10 million players have become map makers, with an average of 10 maps per person." According to the data released by Netease before the Spring Festival, there are now more than 20 million creators of Egg Party, and an average of 3.8 paradise maps are born every second.
Kwan added that "Egg Party" is not a kryptonite game. On the contrary, the commercialization of the game is mainly based on appearance. "Our goal is for all players to establish close social ties in the game, become friends and get together. Therefore, our core business philosophy is to help players be themselves. "
The first creator conference of Egg Party was held on June 17th, 2023. The producer Kwan said that the UGC map of Egg Party was added by one million every week, and the number of creators exceeded ten million.
In contrast, Yuan Meng Xing, which entered the market one and a half years late, even if it invested 1.4 billion yuan in incentive funds to provide all-round support to UGC creators, it would be difficult to cross the moat of UGC content ecology in Egg Party. For example, it is also a recently recommended map. The number of UGC maps of Egg Party is generally in the millions, and the most can even be played by millions of people. On the other hand, "Dream of the Yuan Dynasty" is on the order of 100,000, and at least only tens of thousands of people play it. The user activity of both UGC games is obvious.
The UGC content of Egg Party is too deep, and Yuan Meng Xing, as a follower, is insurmountable.
In fact, Tencent’s product style has always been better at the improvement and perfection stage from 10 to 100, rather than the initial cultivation stage between 0-1 and 1-10. Therefore, the failure of Dream Star is not due to the product strength, but the more important factor is that Tencent, which lost its first-Mover advantage, failed to lay a good foundation in the content ecology. Compared with the UGC content ecology spontaneously formed by the players in Egg Party, Dream Star can’t really build the foundation from 0-10 initial cultivation stage by throwing money alone, so it is naturally difficult to build a towering building from 10-100 on the "tofu soil".
This is the same from the Weibo war with Sina on the social media track in Tencent’s history, the UGC long video war between ByteDance and bilibili on the watermelon video, and the catching-up pace of Tencent’s video number VS Tik Tok on the short video track at present. Of course, just as Ma Huateng described the video number as "the hope of the whole goose factory", Yuan Dream Star is too late to enter the market and is a follower, so it is difficult for Yuan Dream Star to cross the community barrier of UGC content ecology of the pioneer Egg Party.
Back then, Tencent, as a follower of Sina, launched Tencent Weibo only for defense. When WeChat was born, Tencent immediately switched tracks and carried out All in, which kept the foundation of the social empire in the mobile era, and then got tickets for the mobile Internet, which was far more successful than being a social media platform.
When WeChat was born, Tencent immediately changed the track and carried out All in, which was far more successful than being a Weibo.
Today, 14 years later, the whole network is paying attention to the party game war between Tencent and Netease, two China Internet giants. Netease, a veteran game giant in China, which is often known as the "second child of the Millennium", is definitely not willing to be relegated to Tencent for a long time; Tencent, on the other hand, will never give up its position as the game and social leader when it lacks a king-level game relay that can change the industry structure for five consecutive years.
In 2024, if Dream Star wants to achieve something, I’m afraid it needs to readjust its positioning, and make differentiation according to user data and market feedback, so that there is hope of overtaking Egg Party in a corner. He Beihang, a game industry analyst who has worked in Netease and Tencent successively, wrote on his official website that the most suitable route for Yuan Meng Xing is to be different from Egg Party, and the target users are mainly young people with social needs for marriage and love. The game environment is also improved for such users, and the market that Egg Party cannot reach is "established".
Tencent loses key battle
What is the future of Yuan Meng Xing?
Tencent Tianmei Studio Group, which once came from behind in the MOBA mobile game war and made "the glory of the king", a "money printing machine" that made Tencent eat dividends for almost ten years, is undoubtedly the studio with the most abundant funds and resources in the game industry in the world. For example, today’s American studio group mobilized the elites of major studios to create "Star of Dreams", and then mobilized the group’s resources All in to fully bet on entering the party game track that is regarded as the position of guarding Tencent’s social base camp, and it is also a key battle for Tencent to compete for Z generation users.
However, Yuan Meng Xing failed to make Tencent’s dream come true in this crucial battle. Now, Tencent is facing the situation that on the one hand, Netease shook the basic social disk with Egg Party, which caused a "backyard fire", and on the other hand, it supported the creators’ high-intensity marketing investment through "money-buying ability"+joint endorsement+red envelopes "pulling people’s heads" and throwing money, but it did not achieve remarkable results, and the user retention rate was not high.
Nowadays, in this battle that Tencent attaches great importance to, it can’t "lose" or retreat. There are two main roads in front of Yuan Meng Xing: First, it is willing to accept the failure of Yuan Meng Xing, give up its determination and behavior to compete with Netease in party games, and turn to other tracks to find new opportunities; The second is to continue All in, develop a new version of Yuan Meng Xing, and wait for the right time to compete with Netease again.
In addition, Tencent can further increase the price after making a choice in "Dream Star", and then settle down again on the track of party games, support new projects as challengers, and compete with Netease again. For example, among Tencent’s four major studios, only Tianmei Studio Group will go to war at present. It is not excluded that other studios or Tianmei will continue to carry out horse racing attacks on the party game track in the future.
No matter how Tencent will respond next, it will be a key turning point in the history of China’s game industry, which also means that Tencent’s pre-emptive competition mode is not omnipotent in the past. From the "IEG self-research project springing up plan" released by Tencent at the beginning of this year to strengthen the investment in research and development resources for new opportunities, new gameplay and vertical game incubation, Tencent itself is aware of this problem and has started its own reform mechanism for change, but the effect remains to be seen.
On March 15th, after the "Time Roaming" version of Yuan Meng Xing was updated in the new season, the game realized the formal intercommunication between WeChat and QQ. This is also the first time in history that Tencent’s games directly opened the WeChat and QQ ecosystem, and Yuan Meng Xing also surpassed "Egg Party" for one day on the best-selling list. For Tencent, it has undoubtedly opened a new journey of Yuan Meng Xing. It can be seen that at present, Tencent still won’t give up "Dream Star", and it will not easily give up on the track of party games. What kind of big moves Tencent will sacrifice in the future is worthy of continued attention.
"Yuan Meng Xing" realized the official intercommunication between WeChat and QQ, which is the first time in history that Tencent games directly opened the WeChat and QQ ecosystem.
Just as Ma Huateng criticized the unsatisfactory performance of the game business at Tencent Annual Meeting in 2023, he encouraged all the staff: "Now we are as excited as chicken blood, and we are back to the process of how to step up from more than a dozen people in the game industry. Recalling the difficult process of starting a business, we will have a fighting spirit. We can’t lie on the credit book and retreat if we don’t advance."
How will Tencent IEG make a choice in the future, and can it hand over an answer sheet that will satisfy the big boss Ma Huateng?
