I often play Egg Party with my friends now. It’s a little strange to say that I downloaded the game because of the linkage between Egg Party and Goober Attack. When I was a child, I liked the cartoon "Guo Bao Special Attack" very much, and even quarreled with my classmates about whether pineapple blowing snow should be with pineapple wei or pear flower poetry. But when I grew up, it gradually faded out of my sight. It was not until it was linked with "Egg Party" that my former love emerged from my heart-almost 100% of the "Guobao Swordsmen" were restored in the game, which was no different from my memory, even those weapons were there.
It’s just a figure in memory
"Shangguan Ziyi" quickly became one of my favorite and most commonly used skins for Egg Party, and the other one was "DongDong Sheep". "DongDong Sheep" is a lovely white, round lamb that bleats from time to time-in fact, I had met it several times before playing "Egg Party". At that time, I didn’t know about it, and I had never heard of the popular brand of "Flying DongDong", but I was still attracted by the cute image of "DongDong Sheep" and the wonderful second creation of the players, such as the funny voice of "I am sheep honey" and the "fall transition dance" of the lamb.
Nowadays, with the popularity of Egg Party, many trendy shops have put these lambs in the most conspicuous place. Of course, more often, lambs in many shops are out of stock. But in any case, as soon as the lamb appears, the passing guests will sigh: "It’s the lamb in the egg!" The original niche brand exploded overnight, and its IP image and commercial value were fully recognized.
No matter for the market or for me personally, "Guo Bao Special Attack" and "Flying DongDong" are undoubtedly very successful linkages. But we all know that "Egg Party" is not limited to doing IP linkage well, but has greater ambition-taking its own path and building an IP world belonging to Egg.
"Linkage once every 10 days on average"
December 15th is the "Egg Festival" of Egg Party, which was specially set up to celebrate 500 million eggs. The whole festival was very lively, and many benefits were distributed. On the opening day of the Egg Festival, the official gave away three kinds of "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Big Wolf" linked skins for free. In addition, the second bullet of "Guo Bao Special Attack" was opened, and Xiaoguo Lu, Li Huashi and Blossomy were invited to visit Egg Island together.
Most players like me are very much looking forward to "Egg Festival"
Prior to this, the linkage frequency of Egg Party was quite high, with an average interval of less than 11 days, and the linkage objects were various-"Altman", "Long Grass Yan Tuanzi", "Defending Radish", Michelle Ice City, "Hundred Ghosts Kindergarten", Netease Cloud Music, "China Qitan", "Goose and Duck Killing", Sanrio Family, and so on.
Some IP is familiar to me. For example, I once indulged in "Goose and Duck Killing" with my friends for a while, but I didn’t expect to be able to play in "Egg Boy" now. During the linkage period, Egg Party not only launched three classic character skins of Goose and Duck Killing, but also launched the game of "finding out the troublemaker".
There are also some IPs that have aroused my long memories-"Defending Radish" is the first tower defense game I really contacted; "Long Grass Yan Tuanzi" once filled my QQ space; And "GG Bond", unfortunately, because of my age, I didn’t really appreciate the style of this animation at that time, but I found some humor in the animation protagonist on Egg Island.
There are also some IP linkages that are quite "live" and can become a topic as long as they appear in front of players. When I saw the familiar, chubby yellow figure in front of Mi Xue Bing Cheng Store, when I opened the game and heard the phrase "You love me, I love you, Mi Xue Bing Cheng is sweet" in the square, I really couldn’t control my hands and couldn’t wait to try.
The linkage of "breaking the secondary wall" is impressive.
Looking at so many linkages, I found the most important secret of IP linkage in Egg Party, that is "fit"-every IP has a positive, warm and childlike core.
In addition to the similarity of the cores, their "fit" is also reflected in the audience. No matter GG Bond, Altman series, Guo Bao Special Attack, Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, they are all classic childhood animation IP. These classic animations used to be small audiences, but now they are the main players of Egg Party.
Another point of "fit" lies in the moldability of appearance. After all, all the linked objects will become "round" images after entering the world view of Egg Party. Obviously, the production team did not blindly pursue the number or popularity of linked IP, but paid attention to the fit of its own image and tried to achieve "original flavor". This kind of linkage, in a sense, will give me an intimate feeling, making me feel that they really crossed from one world to another, rather than simply "changing skins" and hanging a name.
The painting style of DongDong sheep is very compatible with that of Egg Party.
Under the circumstance that "everything can be hatched", the linked universe of Egg Party is growing. In the online consumption scene, Egg Party has almost exerted a global dominance, and "brushed its face" with great potential energy and high frequency. Brands such as Honey Snow Ice City, Fun Duo Duo, Alpine, KFC, etc. have all taken the initiative to establish cross-industry linkage with "Egg Boy", each of which is the top brand of daily consumption scenarios, and has a huge user base, which has injected huge sinking traffic into Egg Boy IP, which in turn has prompted Egg Boy IP to seamlessly connect with various consumption scenarios.
Nowadays, the IP construction of Egg Party has broken through the boundaries inside and outside the game, online and offline. People can see these eggs appearing at the entrance of tea shop, in the doll machine, in the blind box area of theme shop, in the store furnishings of the mall, and in the mobile navigation prompt. This summer, "Egg Party" also had theme linkage with four domestic theme park brands, including Happy Valley and Sunac Water World. People play egg games, listen to egg music, wear clothes with egg image, buy egg dolls and visit egg theme parks ….. "Egg" is gradually becoming a way of life.
The story of "Egg Boy"
After playing "Egg Party", I began to understand the story of "Egg Party". Through the official CG video and the short story, I was surprised to find that there was such a vivid and happy world behind the blind box machine.
In the world view of Egg Party, all the stories happened inside the blind box vending machine. There is a lively and happy egg island behind the blind box machine, where round eggs live. Every time humans throw gold coins into vending machines, it will cause a rift in time and space on Egg Island. Eggs need to work hard to get gold coins symbolizing victory before they can go to the human world.
When you know these background stories, it is inevitable that you will feel more intimate when you see them appear in the loading interface.
Players often see several characters on the loading page, such as Xiao Huang, Xiao Hei, Xiao Fen, Xiao Lan and Xiao Lv. They also live on the island of Dan Zi, with their own unique personalities and lead their own "egg life". It can be said that every character has a very realistic soul, or let the user find his own shadow in it, or make the user resonate with the character story at the same frequency. In addition to the five main characters, the popular characters such as Naughty Maruko, Aberdeen Bear and Heartless Bear also have their own independent story lines, but in the end they will be connected in series at a certain detail, involving the appearances or stories of other characters.
The story characteristics of "a big world has spawned countless small worlds" also make "Egg Boy" IP have almost unlimited tolerance-in the story, players will have emotional resonance with the egg boys; Outside the story, it can accommodate one world view with different IP. As long as you come to Egg Island, you can become friends and become a member of the Egg World.
Many players will discuss the season plot of "Egg Party" on social platforms and be moved by it.
This also makes "Egg Party" not limited to a party game that attracts players with casual gameplay, but has the quality of a truly excellent IP-constantly deriving new game works and accumulating huge fans under its own unique worldview. This power is magical and powerful. If a virtual world becomes an IP that I am familiar with and love, I will no longer be satisfied with being a simple player, but will pay attention to the derivative products, fan creation (even output) of this game, and continue to pay attention to its future, which is the drainage effect brought by IP and the key to the long-term operation of the game.
The development team of "Egg Party" clearly knows this. Since the game was launched, it has been constantly improving and filling the IP content. With the process of linkage with various IPs, the IP of "Egg Party" has become more and more popular. When we mention it, we think of not only the game itself, but also the naive image of Egg and a series of stories derived from Egg Party. With the launch of offline authorization cooperation and IP derivatives, the egg IP has been pushed to another height.
The IP image of "Egg Boy" has penetrated into the hearts of many players.
Looking at the development of Egg IP, I can only think of one word to describe it-"the protagonist of Shuang Wen".
"Shuang Wen" is reflected in "Egg Party", which is loved by everyone, and all the top IP companies have sent cooperation invitations to it. But in essence, the internal reason for this "cool" is that "Egg Party" can fit them perfectly, so as to achieve a win-win effect. By establishing cooperation with Egg IP, these brands have gained a strong blessing and achieved exponential growth in influence. In this situation, "Egg Party" has become the hottest linkage object in the game session.
Another similarity with "Shuang Wen’s protagonist" is that "Egg Party" is ambitious enough-this game wants to build its own IP and create an egg world. From a single party game to complete the transformation of content platform, to dig deep into IP stories and strengthen IP anchor points, and then to link online and offline frequently for dozens of times, the commercial value of the brand is gradually accumulated, thus running through the whole link of IP development and building its own "business kingdom".
The "egg-egg linkage family" is growing.
At the 2022 annual performance conference, Ding Lei, CEO of Netease, said: "In the future, we will invest more in R&D and management, and do a good job in the long-term service of the game (Egg Party). The’ long term’ here is at least 10 years. " If the agreement of "10 years" can really be achieved, then I believe that "Egg Party" can create a classic, popular and enduring national IP as people expect.
At present, with the continuous expansion of the egg IP matrix, we can also predict that in the future, it will have more and more rich linkage forms. What is clear is that "Egg Party" not only subtly builds the trend culture accepted by young people, but also broadens the new extension of "game"-a "virtual amusement park" that can provide healing and joy for all.