"Egg Party", a mobile game focusing on the female player market, suddenly exploded in early 2023, and topped the App download list for five consecutive months after that.
Half a year after it became popular, "Egg Party" experienced a short-term ranking drop, but soon, the game got a ride from AIGC. Since June, it has continuously deployed multiple AI creation tools to support creators to generate them with one click. certain game elements. As a result, this game once again created a popular myth.
Is AIGC really the magic weapon of "Egg Party"?
In fact, "Diy map", "UGC ecology", and "innovative gameplay" are the keywords that make "Egg Party" explode. Since its launch, a large number of UGC creators in "Egg Party" have contributed map works, which have gradually become the core component of the game.
Kwan, the game's producer, disclosed at the first creators' conference that the number of maps released in "Egg Boy Game" has reached the order of one million per week, and the number of creators has reached tens of millions. The existence of a huge group of creators and users makes AIGC tools useful, which in turn contributes to the continued popularity of the game.
As Kwan said, "The map creator is the most important part of the game, and your (creator) extraordinary creativity is the core value of the game."
AIGC ignites "Egg Party"
The public beta of "Egg Boy Party" was launched in May 2022. It is a Jelly Bean-like game - the "Egg Boys" played by players survived the checkpoints in various maps, and after layers of elimination, the ranking was determined.
At the beginning of its launch, "Egg Party" was still a little-known casual game. During the Spring Festival in 2023, it suddenly became a phenomenon-level game. It has remained in the top ten of the iOS double list in the country for a long time, and topped the list of mobile game downloads from time to time.
Many people know the game "Egg Party" not because it is a "replica of Jelly Bean Man", but because of the interesting maps created by players. On Xiaohongshu and Station B, the map recommendation and map making tutorial of "Egg Boy Party" are the topics that young people love to discuss.
How passionate are the map creators for Egg Party?
Producer Kwan once revealed that the number of maps released in "Egg Boy Game" reached one million levels every week, and the number of creators reached tens of millions. In Egg Boy Workshop, the creativity of players is released, and creators with big brains often design some ingenious gameplay content.
"Egg Party" UGC map is hot
Around the creation of maps, there is even a business of making maps on the Internet. However, the business of map generation reflects to a certain extent that the current game editor still has operating thresholds. A creator of "Egg Party" said, "When I first started, it took half a day or even a day to make a simple map. It may take a few days to make some fun and beautiful high-quality maps. Playing this It takes patience and skill."
In the past year, the popularity of this game has experienced two peaks. From mid-November 2022 to April 2023, it will stand on the top of the download list almost every month. In May, "Egg Party" will be ranked Top 1 No longer stable, there is a decline.
The ranking trend of "Egg Party" in the past year
However, the game producers did not let the decline in popularity last for too long. In June, the anniversary version of "Egg Party" was launched, AIGC+UGC creative mode was launched, and a variety of AIGC functions were added.
On June 15th, the "Generator" function of the "Egg Party" creative workshop was officially launched, which supports one-click generation of pixel art, pixel text, and flowers. You know, before the "generator" goes online, making a flower usually requires step-by-step debugging of the shape, position, and color of each petal. This is a link that requires a lot of patience. Now, with the help of the "generator", creators only need to customize and adjust the parameters of the petals to generate flowers of various styles with one click.
AI-assisted map color change with one click
In addition, the pixel art and pixel text tools can also pixelate any photos and texts of the creator, and generate personalized photo walls and text walls with one click. On August 3rd, the one-click color change function of the egg party map was also launched. The system can automatically extract the color of the picture uploaded by the creator and generate a color palette. From the fantasy forest color system to the dark cool color system, it can be done with one click.
It is reported that the core members of the "Egg Party" team were in charge of NetEase's first game editor "Beaver Project". It can be said that the original team was born as a map editor, and has rich experience in the gameplay of creating maps. experience.
Before integrating AIGC tools, "Egg Party" has formed a complete creator ecology, such as holding regular creator contests, frequent IP linkage, generous creator bonuses, etc., and the path of content creation and monetization is very clear. With the maturity of generative AI, the integration of AIGC in the game editor seems to be a matter of course.
The real burning point is the "G"
If "Egg Party" is compared to a ball of fire, this female-focused and casual game itself has the potential to be "combustible" (fireable). The UGC (User Generated Content) model is to make the game and users An oxidizing agent that produces a chemical reaction. The AIGC added today is just a combustion aid, and the real ignition point is the "G", which is the constantly stimulated user creativity.
According to the analysis of the Gamma Data "Game Industry Report from January to March 2023", the construction of UGC ecology is one of the important factors that help games perform well. In order to stimulate users' desire for expression and enthusiasm for creation, "Egg Party" provides a map editor that can be used by elementary school students, and continuously introduces cross-industry linkage objects to enrich content creation materials and promote players' desire for expression and enthusiasm for creation. The diversified user-generated maps are connected with the main gameplay of the game platform, and gradually form a positive ecological cycle.
"Egg Party" once again proved the effectiveness of the creator's economy after being properly activated. The new model of AIGC+UGC is also constantly being experimented in the field of content creation, either succeeding or failing.
In June of this year, Unity, a well-known overseas game engine, launched three AI generation tools in a row to assist game producers. Marc Whitten, President of Unity Create, published a special article explaining the impact of generative AI on game makers. He pointed out that generative AI will greatly improve the productivity of Unity creators, while ushering in a large number of new creators. The current "Cambrian explosion" of generative AI will be an opportunity for Unity to further develop.
In May of this year, Jingtan, a leading domestic data collection platform, also launched AI painting tools and UGC data collection , intending to explore the possibility of AIGC+UGC in the field of data collection. The connection is very limited and does not really stimulate the user's creative enthusiasm.
In April, MiHoYo, which also focuses on the development of UGC ecology, launched the AIGC tool "Meme Resonance Machine" in "Honkai Star Railway". This is a picture-generating tool based on AI algorithms, which supports creators to change all pictures into the protagonist of the game "March Seven". In just a few days, the creators generated more than 9 million copies of "March 7" through the "meme resonance machine", triggering a wave of "everything can be March 7" craze.
Mihayou officially took the lead in playing tricks, making the boss "March 7"
But this wave of craze didn't last long. A few months later, the number of originals under the Weibo topic "Everything can be March 7" was almost zero. In fact, the AIGC tool "Meme Resonance Machine" launched by MiHoYo this time is more like a marketing campaign, using AIGC's innovative gameplay to support players' interactive play, and increase the exposure of the game in the short term.
The difference is that the AIGC+UGC model of "Egg Party" puts more emphasis on the effective linkage between users and "G" - AIGC as an auxiliary tool lowers the UGC threshold and attracts more new players who want to start creating maps. Thereby continuously enriching the game ecology.
Fang Han, CEO of Kunlun Wanwei, once said: "The life cycle of games is limited. After AIGC is connected, user-created content will be more diverse." He pointed out that with the integration of AIGC, the next "Minecraft" will be on the UGC+AIGC platform appears in . "Judging from the size of the creators of "Egg Party" and the persistence of creative enthusiasm, "Egg Party" seems to have achieved this.
However, the AIGC+UGC model of "Egg Party" is difficult to copy directly, because it needs to be the first to open up the player market, which requires the game itself to be attractive enough to users. For example, the map is DIY and open to the outside world, which is already a lot of games Levels that cannot be achieved.
"Egg Party" can be popular, and can continue to be popular. To put it bluntly, this game has grasped the "mass line", and the creative enthusiasm inspired by a large number of users is its real confidence.