Eggy Party

Eggy Party is a casual competitive battle royale game.^[13] The player, represented as a sphere-shaped character called "Eggy" allows players to use Eggy's skills to play the game.^[14] The game uses parkour as the core gameplay element and features three different party round types: "Survival Party", "Race Party", and "Score Party". Players are scored on survival time or time to reach the finish line.^[15][13] In the "Classic Mode", there are a total of 32 players and four rounds. The first players to reach the end point, enter the next round and the last players are eliminated. Players will receive items to hinder their game progress, thus balancing the gap between players.^[16] During the game, players can control the Eggy to perform basic operations such as moving and jumping. Game operations such as throwing are also set up to help teammates or hinder other players. The game is equipped with items such as land mines, bowling balls, and the "Finisher". Players can use such items to promote the progress of the game.^[17] There are seven independent ranks in the game's "Ranked Party", in which the player's rank can be improved.^[18] In addition to the parkour gameplay, game developers have set up gamemodes based on mechanisms such as hide-and-seek and werewolf killing, integrated with the images of the Eggies.^[15][17]

Eggy Party allows the uploading of user-generated content (UGC), which is generally considered to be one of the core aspects of the game. Players use the built-in editor in the game to edit scenes and maps, which are publicly publishable to the game community. Players can search for content created by other players for single player or multiplayer games.^[19][20] Game developer Kwan stated that in early 2023, more than one million maps are uploaded to the game every week.^[16]

"Eggy Party" was developed by NetEase, and the company's CEO, Ding Lei, said the project would be in operation for at least ten years.^[21] During development, the development team believed that the creation and design of user-generated content should be the focus of the game, and the team's core members have experience in developing such content. Players participated in the development and community building of the game by designing original maps.^[22] Game developer Hu Lan believes that this type of map-building function is the key to the game's success, provides strong support for the number of players, enhances the social attributes of the game, and ensures player stickiness.^[21] Game developer member Kwan believes that the community creators of the game are significant for the game's development, and the creativity of players as creators will promote community development.^[22] NetEase Games held the first "Creator Conference" of "Eggy Party" in June 2023 and invited its original map creators to participate.^[20]

The game project team has made adjustments to the map editor. To enrich the richness of map works, the team continued to add various interactive props during the development process and continued to follow up on such content in subsequent development. The logic-based writing feature of the map editor and the ability to create performances in the gameplay are the focus of development. On this basis, the developer has also designed the function of writing dialogues and performances for non-player characters so that map creation can be used to write and produce stories. The project team is trying to integrate artificial intelligence into the game to reduce repeated operations and promote increased production of user content.^[22]

In July 2021, "Eggy Party" obtained a version number issued by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party and was allowed to be released in mainland China.^[23][24] The game began its first closed beta test in February 2021.^[25] After four tests, named the "Leading Test," "Good Friends Test," "Opening Test," and "Ultimate Test",^{[26][27][28][29]} it was officially released in mainland China on Android and iOS platforms on May 27, 2022. It was later announced to be launched in Taiwan on June 30 in the next year in conjunction with Envoy Games.^[30][31] The game appeared on NetEase's "520 Conference" on May 20, 2023, and showed the new version of the game's promotional video.^[32][33] In August of the same year, the game cooperated with the Shanghai Communications Administration to use the game's character "Eggy" and the fictional character "Shou Hu Miao" to publish a comic with anti-fraud education as the theme, and carried out anti-fraud education for the social system in the game. This cooperation plan added artificial intelligence components to the game to automatically identify fraud or illegal behavior and actively intercept it.^[34]

On May 8, 2023, the game collaborated with the Japanese convenience store brand Lawson and launched related catering products, accessories, figurines, and other products.^[35] On May 19 of the same year, the game collaborated with the candy brand Alps and launched candy products based on the game characters.^[36]