Virtual concerts set off a new trend, Snapchat games and entertainment come up with new tricks

Recently, international pop star Jennifer Lopez and Snapchat, a social platform loved by young people around the world, cooperated to hold the world's first virtual concert with super sensory experience. In a carefully designed virtual modern world, performers performed on stage with their own virtual images, and fans also joined in with their own Bitmoji virtual images, screaming and carnival along with the rhythm of the concert. Coincidentally, last year, the virtual concert held by internationally renowned singer Ariana Grande in the game "Fortnite" was a great success worldwide, reflecting the new way of playing games and entertainment under the wave of the metaverse.

（ Jennifer virtual concert scene）

Entering a new era of augmented reality, a new trend in overseas gaming

From 2021 to 2022, games, the most important bridge between the real and virtual worlds, have become the focus of the spotlight. First, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard to pave the way for its entry, and then domestic manufacturer Mihoyo announced the establishment of HoYoverse. Many major manufacturers have participated in the "involution".

Future games may be the first to break the boundaries between the virtual world and the real world, and players have expressed strong expectations and willingness to pay. The Snap Consumer AR Report estimates that 75% of people worldwide will become regular AR users in 2025, which means that an AR user market dominated by Generation Z and Millennials is taking shape. The Snapchat Generation Z Insight Report found that being more playful, curious, creative, and willing to pay for hobbies has become a label for Generation Z, and is also a typical portrait of most users on the Snapchat platform. As a result, the combination of massive and high stickiness, high retention rate, and strong spending power makes Snapchat a platform that game manufacturers cannot ignore to attract users.

( Some camera tricks on Snapchat )

Nowadays, AR technology is giving games a new way of presentation, which is also very attractive to players. Tracy Zhang, head of Snapchat's China business, said, "By creating a strong interactive experience, users can travel through the game scene and become game characters to have a thrilling game experience. In terms of marketing, in addition to traditional pictures and videos, Snapchat provides a highly immersive AR experience, enriching the game experience and hitting the excitement point, giving the game brand a label of avant-garde, fun, and black technology, which significantly increased the game's download volume and user retention rate."

On the Snapchat platform, this kind of real-time and interactive virtual experience is becoming a daily routine for 319 million daily active users and over 200 million game players. There is reason to believe that Snapchat can bring more ideas to game manufacturers who are stuck in the quagmire of buying traffic and the dilemma of game licenses.

The core gaming market is undergoing a major reshuffle; Snapchat is developing new strategies for overseas marketing

The direction of the game changes rapidly, and users in different regions have diverse game preferences, which affects the ranking of each "player" in the global game landscape . The "2021 China Game Industry Report" shows that the US market revenue accounted for 32.58%, surpassing Japan and South Korea for the first time to rank first. From the perspective of game categories, Sanqi Interactive Entertainment's "Puzzle & Survival" has gained a foothold in the United States for the first time with its innovative gameplay of "fusion three-in-one". Tracy Zhang believes that in addition to working hard on game localization, finding the right marketing path and adopting creative promotion strategies are also important links in achieving high retention and high customer acquisition. To this end, Snapchat has gradually formed a set of marketing solutions covering the entire process in actual combat.

During the game preheating stage, the platform uses a variety of tools to help brands accurately understand the differentiated demands of user groups on Snapchat, analyze different countries and groups, and conduct targeted trials and reservations.   & Servival” targets the core audience of 30+ males. With the help of Snapchat’s lifestyle classification function (SLC), the manufacturer has accurately recruited Snapchatters around the world who love sports, pay attention to movies and news, successfully reached core players in Europe and the United States, helped the game continue to build momentum, and completed preparations for the online ranking.

After the game is launched, its journey to the market has just begun. From the launch stage to the deep operation stage, it will face many challenges in terms of download volume, UA pull and revenue realization. To help game products stand out in the market performance, Snapchat's full-chain game marketing plan provides operators with a diverse advertising product portfolio, helping to maximize the efficiency of reach and continuously helping games to optimize IAP and IAA monetization. Based on the characteristics of the three-elimination elements of "Puzzle & Survival", advertising is carried out in the form of Story Ads and Video Ads, with a variety of game plot settings and script design that fits the interests of European and American players, ultimately hitting the user's pleasure point, whetting the players' "appetite" during the promotion stage, and ultimately, the conversion rate increased by 30% and the in-app purchase rate increased by 80%.

Tracy Zhang emphasized that full-chain marketing is an important tool for games to achieve stable growth, and creativity is the key to telling a good brand story and gaining user favor. Game stories are often huge in content and complex in clues. After splitting the game selling points and narrative clues for creative transformation, it is also necessary to focus on the concise communication of a single format, the guiding power of the copywriting introduction, the rendering effect of the BGM, and the length control.

At the same time, Snapchat believes that powerful AR filters can bring the gaming experience into the real world, thereby attracting gamers. For example, Lilith established an official account on Snapchat in the early stages of promotion and adopted a variety of delivery strategies including AR filters, allowing players to immerse themselves in the game characters outside of the game, and the number of app downloads increased significantly. Longteng Games, which has expanded to the Middle East, has cooperated with Snapchat to launch a series of filters with Arabic festivals as the main theme, which has also received good reviews.

What will games look like in the future? Let’s take a look at Snapchat’s gaming ecosystem

On the Snapchat platform, you can see the following scene: two people in different cities are collaborating to complete Lego splicing through Snapchat AR, and a group of friends who are scattered all over the world due to the epidemic are having a Bitmoji party to play small games. As a social platform, Snapchat not only creates a stress-free and shareable social environment, but also leads an immersive virtual world atmosphere through AR technology. It is not difficult to understand why Snapchat users can open it more than 30 times a day, and why games on Snapchat can always form fission-like dissemination.

From "birth" to "adulthood", Snapchat plays different roles and has built a complete ecological closed loop for game development, operation and marketing. In terms of development tools, Snapchat provides a variety of different technologies and products to assist game development and operation, such as the Snap Kit development tool that helps developers use tools such as Story Kit and Bitmoji Kit in their applications.

The Snap Game platform provides developers with more possibilities for cooperation. It is reported that the platform has released 40 games worldwide since its creation in 2019, and has established long-term strategic cooperation with outstanding developers such as Voodoo. In addition, Snap Game provides a new scenario for game social interaction based on the virtual future. The Bitmoji image is another you, where you can do what you want, wear what you love, travel through multiple games, chat with friends, share happiness in real time, take photos with the real self and the virtual self, and witness the highlights of the game together.

It is worth mentioning that AR special effects games that are interactive, scenario-based, and immersive can also find their own solutions on Snapchat. A set of AR ecosystems from tools, content to platforms has been equipped for game developers.

Regarding the new trend of games, Tracy Zhang said, "Snapchatters have a strong desire to have common topics with their peers, and they are happy to share games and usage experiences. Therefore, game developers can start with the social nature of games, combine the rich game ecosystem of Snap Games, Bitmoji, AR and brand channels, and create immersive and innovative gameplay for Snapchatters. This may be a direction for everyone to gain more in the future. At the same time, this direction is also the path that well-known overseas manufacturers such as Voodoo are taking."

Snapchat

Virtual Concert

Online virtual interaction