"Egg Party", a mobile game that focuses on the female player market, suddenly became popular at the beginning of 2023 and repeatedly topped the app download charts for more than 5 months.

After being popular for almost half a year, "Egg Party" experienced a brief decline in rankings, but soon the game caught the tailwind of AIGC and deployed multiple AI creation tools from June to support creators in generating certain game elements with just one click. As a result, the game once again created a hot myth.

Is AIGC really the divine tool for "Egg Party"?

In fact, "DIY maps," "UGC ecosystem," and "innovative gameplay" are the keywords that led to the popularity of "Egg Party." Since its launch, a large number of UGC creators in "Egg Party" have contributed map works, gradually becoming the core of the game.

Kwan, the game's producer, revealed at the first Creator Conference that the weekly map release quantity of "Egg Party" has reached the level of millions, with tens of millions of creators. The existence of a huge group of creator users is what gave AIGC tools a place to shine, in turn achieving the game's sustained popularity.

As Kwan said, "Map creators are the most important part of the game, and your (creators') extraordinary creativity is the core value of the game."

AIGC Ignites "Egg Party"

"Egg Party" was publicly tested in May 2022. It is a game similar to "Jelly Bean People" - players play as "eggs" and survive through various maps to determine their rankings after multiple eliminations.

At the beginning of its launch, "Egg Party" was still a relatively unknown casual game. During the Spring Festival of 2023, it suddenly became a phenomenon, maintaining a long-term presence in the top ten of the iOS charts in the national region, and occasionally topping the mobile game download charts.

Many people are familiar with "Egg Party," not because it is a "Jelly Bean People" knockoff, but because of the interesting player-created maps. On platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, discussions about "Egg Party" maps and map creation tutorials are the favorite topics of young people.

How passionate are the map creators of "Egg Party"?

Producer Kwan once revealed that the weekly map release quantity of "Egg Party" has reached the level of millions, with tens of millions of creators. In the "Egg Workshop," players' creativity is unleashed, and the imaginative creators often design some unique gameplay content.

"Egg Party" UGC maps are popular

Around map creation, there has even been a business of map creation services online. However, to a certain extent, the business of map creation services reflects the fact that the current game editor still has a certain learning curve. A "Egg Party" map creator said, "When I first started, it took half a day or even a whole day to create a simple map. It might take several days to create some fun and visually appealing high-quality maps. Playing this game requires a lot of patience and skill."

In the past year, the popularity of this game has experienced two peaks. From mid-November 2022 to April 2023, it almost topped the download charts every month. However, in May, "Egg Party" no longer maintained a stable Top 1 ranking and began to decline.

Trend of "Egg Party" rankings in the past year

However, the game developers did not let the decline in popularity last too long. In June, the anniversary version of "Egg Party" was launched, introducing the AIGC+UGC creation mode and adding various AIGC features. As a result, the game's popularity soared again, returning to the top three of the free and best-selling charts.

On June 15, the "Generator" function of the "Egg Party" Creative Workshop was officially launched, supporting one-click generation of pixel art, pixel text, and flowers. Before the "Generator" was launched, creating a flower usually required adjusting the shape, position, and color of each petal step by step, which required a lot of patience. Now, with the "Generator," creators only need to customize the parameters of the petals to generate various styles of flowers with just one click.

AI-assisted one-click color change for maps

In addition, the pixel art and pixel text tools can also pixelate any photo and text of the creator, generating personalized photo walls and text walls with just one click. On August 3, the "one-click color change" function for "Egg Party" maps was also launched, where the system can automatically extract the colors of the images uploaded by the creator and generate a color palette, handling dreamy forest color schemes to dark and cool color schemes with just one click.

It is reported that the core members of the "Egg Party" team were once responsible for Netease's first game editor project, "Beaver Plan." It can be said that the original team has a rich experience in game editors and a main gameplay focused on map creation.

Before integrating AIGC tools, "Egg Party" had already formed a complete creator ecosystem, such as regularly holding creator competitions, frequent IP collaborations, and generous creator bonuses, making the content creation and monetization path very clear. With the maturity of generative AI, integrating AIGC into the game editor seems to be a natural fit.

The Real Ignition Point is the "G"

If "Egg Party" is compared to a fire, this game itself, which focuses on female and casual players, already has the potential to "ignite." The UGC (User Generated Content) mode is the oxidant that creates a chemical reaction between the game and the users. Now, with the addition of AIGC, it is just an accelerant, and the real ignition point is that "G," the continuously inspired user creativity.

Gamma Data's "2023 Q1-Q3 Game Industry Report" analysis pointed out that the construction of a UGC ecosystem is one of the important factors that contribute to the good performance of games. In order to stimulate users' desire for expression and creativity, "Egg Party" provides a map editor that even elementary school students can operate, and continuously introduces cross-industry collaborative objects to enrich content creation materials, promoting players' desire for expression and creativity. The diverse user-generated maps are connected with the main gameplay of the game platform, gradually forming a positive ecological cycle.

"Egg Party" once again proves the effectiveness of the creator economy when properly activated, and the new AIGC+UGC mode is constantly being experimented with in the field of content creation, with varying degrees of success.

In June of this year, the well-known overseas game engine Unity released three AI generation tools in succession to assist game developers. Marc Whitten, President of the Unity Create department, specifically elaborated on the impact of generative AI on game developers. He pointed out that generative AI will greatly improve the work efficiency of Unity creators and bring in a large number of new creators. The current "Cambrian explosion" of generative AI will be an opportunity for further development of Unity.

In May of this year, the leading domestic number hiding platform Whale Probe also launched AI painting tools and UGC number hiding, aiming to explore the potential of AIGC+UGC in the field of number hiding. However, due to the limited connection between Whale Probe's AIGC tools and UGC casting number hiding, it did not truly stimulate users' creative enthusiasm.

In April, Mihoyo, which also focuses on developing UGC ecosystems, launched the AIGC tool "Meme Resonance Machine" for "Honkai Star Rail." This is an AI algorithm-based image generation tool that supports creators in transforming all images into the game's protagonist "March Seven." In just a few days, creators generated over nine million "March Sevens" through the "Meme Resonance Machine," sparking a wave of "everything can be March Seven" trend.

Mihoyo's official participation in the trend, turning the boss into "March Seven"

However, this trend did not last long, and the original content volume under the Weibo topic "everything can be March Seven" was almost zero after a few months. In fact, the AIGC tool "Meme Resonance Machine" launched by Mihoyo this time seemed more like a marketing activity, supporting player interaction and trends with innovative AIGC gameplay, temporarily increasing the game's exposure.

In contrast, the AIGC+UGC model of "Egg Party" emphasizes the effective linkage between users and "G" - AIGC as an auxiliary tool reduces the threshold for UGC, attracting more new players who want to create maps, thereby continuously enriching the game ecosystem.

Kunlun Wanwei CEO Fang Han once said, "The game lifecycle is limited. With the integration of AIGC, user-generated content becomes more diverse." He pointed out that with the integration of auxiliary AIGC, the next "Minecraft" will appear in the UGC+AIGC platform." Judging from the sustained volume and enthusiasm of "Egg Party" creators, it seems that "Egg Party" has achieved this.

However, the AIGC+UGC model of "Egg Party" is difficult to directly replicate because it requires first tapping into the player market, which requires the game itself to have enough appeal to users, such as the ability to DIY maps and open them to the public, which is already an aspect that many games cannot achieve.

The fact that "Egg Party" can become popular and sustain its popularity ultimately comes down to the fact that this game has captured the "mass line," and the large amount of user-inspired creative enthusiasm is its true source of strength.

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