With the advent of the era of high-quality products, the strength balance of CP, distribution and channels in the industry has changed.

The channel is a bridge connecting game developers and players. Its core value is traffic, that is, the users themselves. While providing high-quality games to players, it also provides high-quality target users to developers, including game developers. Providing full-process service and support will be the irreplaceable value of the channel.

As the core value of games returns to content, GameLook believes that channels will always play their role, but if they want to continue to be active at the center of the stage in the future, they must actively respond to the changes of the times. In the past, channels have done a lot of work on communityization and content. Finally, some channels have finally taken the key step - making channels "become" games.

Not only distributes content, but also cultivates relationships

For example, since February, Huawei Game Center has launched a new long-term activity "Yuyou World" on the platform. "Youyou World" is not so much an activity as an online business game. In GameLook's understanding, "Youyou World" is positioned as a platform within a platform, another embodiment of Huawei Game Center. change.

Therefore, "Youyou World" is designed to look like a game arcade, where players can continue to operate, unlock and expand until they have a small world covering 20 games.

The game hall combines two completely different styles, the future and the retro, and achieves a harmonious unity under this premise. Every equipment, venue and even NPC villains continue the similar fusion idea design, reflecting diversified creativity. From classic arcade machines, to popular claw machines, to futuristic motorcycles, all of them can arouse players' original and purest love for games.

As a result, "Youyou World" quickly gained the love of players. After it went online in early February, a large number of players poured in. In two weeks, the number of visits exceeded 10 million. On New Year's Eve, the number of visits reached about 3.5 million. The highest number of visitors was more than 60%, which shows the players' enthusiasm and recognition of the event.

At the same time, "Youyou World" not only plays the emotional card of "power generation for love", the activity also incorporates more incentive mechanisms. Players who are immersed in it can not only get a superior business and entertainment experience, but also unlock various rewards during the accumulation of tokens, including but not limited to coupons, headphones, figures, and even high-end mobile phones.

It is reported that within the 10 days from February 8th to 17th, the special Spring Festival event of "Youyou World" alone, the "Fanfu Card" lottery coin and coupon event, attracted nearly 200,000 players Participation, compared to the same period in previous years, the enthusiasm of players has been significantly improved.

In fact, the core of the activity is not simply how many rewards players can get by playing games, but the "getting rewards" event itself, which can break the inherent concept of the public users that games are useless.

Horizontal comparison, the mechanism of "Youyou World" is similar to Alipay's "Ant Forest" and Pinduoduo's "Duoduo Orchard". They either rely on public welfare or use agricultural products as the entry point to bring users Beyond the satisfaction of the game itself, through the experience of breaking the circle, the audience can break the circle.

What makes “Youyou World” unique is that its form of expression vividly embodies the Huawei Game Center, which is the “platform within a platform” positioning mentioned earlier. This is also the reason why "Youyou World" chose to use a game arcade - an image that can bring many games together and bring people laughter. Through "Youyou World", Huawei Game Center can convey its positioning and values ??to more players without any loss. It is not only a platform for distributing content, but also a community that accompanies growth.

Getting happiness from the game to getting happiness from the platform

Transforming the game platform into a game is indeed unexpected, but it is not a brilliant move. It has directly hit the game store. Pain points that exist and try to solve: The game is fun, but the platform is not.

Before this, players’ attitude towards the platform was more of “use it and leave.” In this case, it is difficult to establish user loyalty, which is easy to cause loss and is not conducive to the long-term operation of the channel.

In order to cope with this challenge, in the past, the actions taken by channels have basically focused on content-based and community-based efforts, such as introducing a rating system and increasing discussion communities, that is, by creating a sense of belonging and dependence within the platform. sense, maintain and enhance user loyalty.

However, unlike offline communities, the disadvantage of online communities is that their communications are highly abstract. Although text directly refines information and enhances communication efficiency, it lacks a sense of presence and has no intuitive image, making it difficult for people to feel a sense of belonging to the platform. It is highly dependent on the UGC content provided by players to create emotional bonds, which is very unstable.

Therefore, before “Youyou World”, Huawei Game Center also made a lot of attempts on the content side.

For example, Huawei Game Center has planned "New Game Breaking Room", "Game Information Bureau", "Road to Top Scores", "August Doujin Society", "You Fengshang" and "Bip Bida" in one go 》***Six original programs, from different perspectives of information, strategies, fans, and even the front line of game development, use high-quality PGC content to record the happiness of players when accompanying the game.

"Yoyou World" has a similar approach. It extends the player's experience and emotions that were originally isolated within a single game to outside the game, that is, to the entire platform. Through "Yoyou World", "Beep Beep" A large number of activities and contents such as "Tao" are used in the form of entertainment to subtly complete the empathy of users from getting happiness from the game to getting happiness from the platform.

If you look at the "Yuyou World" by analyzing games, it is not difficult to find the deeper purpose of Huawei Game Center, which is not only to provide entertainment products and entertainment experiences, but also to provide an entertainment experience. The social platform has become a multi-dimensional bridge connecting players, developers, content, etc.

Act as a bridge in the industry and get rid of the fate of "tool man" in the channel

The ingenuity of "Youyou World" lies in its bold combination of games and the formation of "gamification" A new model that deepens players' sense of belonging to the platform through simulation business games that are most likely to generate emotional sedimentation costs.

This sense of belonging is further enhanced by mechanisms such as gold coin exchange rewards, daily reports, and achievements.

In other words, "Youyou World" has given players new goals. People no longer wander aimlessly, hoping to randomly hit the jackpot and find their favorite game, but actively immerse themselves in it.

Such a change is crucial for Huawei Game Center, which is backed by 200 million "pollen".

People are the sum of social relationships. People create and maintain connections and generate value through social interaction. In the era of mobile Internet, social networking has never been so convenient, but it has never been so fragile. As a community that transcends a single distribution function, the charm of Huawei Game Center is that players from all over the world can gather together based on the same hobbies. The "World of Friends" further enhances this possibility and brings new possibilities.

From a player’s perspective, what’s new may be a more warm community and safer and more considerate services; from a developer’s perspective, what’s new may be more efficient user contact and more authentic player communication. .

For Huawei Game Center itself, and even the entire channel and gaming industry, new possibilities mean that players can extend their use time, increase user stickiness, and get rid of the channel's "tool man" attribute. We have returned to an era when there is no need for platform promotion and players will actively look for games, even forming a closed loop in which players play games for the sake of playing games.

Based on this premise, "Youyou World" is expected to help Huawei Game Center create a new model of game channels, bringing more possibilities to product distribution and the long-term development of the game industry.

It is true that in the past two years, the debate about "content is king" and "channel is king" has long been finalized, but the arrival of the era of high-quality products does not mean the break between content and channels. On the contrary, the more high-quality content, the higher the research and development costs required, and the more users it needs to reach, and channels that can connect content and users are indispensable.

Conclusion

Content and channels are not antagonistic. “Youyou World” has released a signal, a signal for more positive changes in channels. Good content not only speaks for itself, but also needs to better find its target users.

As players become smarter and aesthetic taste becomes more and more important, channels, developers, and publishers should be on the same front.

Not only through official recommendation of good games, but also through players' subjective initiative to cultivate dark horses, not only to locate existing high-quality players, but also to explore potential audiences, etc. And this is exactly the direction that Huawei Game Center is currently working towards through its channels. (Article source: GameLook)