From “Genshin Impact” to “Egg Boy Party”, from secondary content to offline cos, Xiaohongshu’s game community has shown amazing activity and stickiness. However, this seemingly prosperous virtual paradise has also made many players “love and hate”: on the one hand, it is an ideal space to obtain information and express love; On the other hand, controversy, rhythm and information overload within the community can also be exhausting. This article will deeply analyze the A and B sides of the Xiaohongshu game community from the perspectives of players, platforms and manufacturers, and explore why it can become a new position in game marketing and why it makes players fall into emotional pull.
A gamer on Xiaohongshu told “New Position”: “I have been using Xiaohongshu for many years, and I feel that the operation of Xiaohongshu’s game section seems to have started last year, because I posted Hearthstone notes in Xiaohongshu many years ago, when Blizzard had not yet withdrawn from the national server, but there was no splash, not long after Blizzard returned to Hearthstone to launch the national server last year, probably because I posted this type of note a few years ago, I was officially pulled into the [Xiaohongshu Official Hearthstone Friends 1 Group].”
The player said that the administrator of the group is the official account of Xiaohongshu “Uncle Xiaohong”, and the group members also saw the Hearthstone blogger IDs of other platforms that they have been familiar with for many years and some game bloggers, and there are currently more than 800 people in the group.
In fact, this player’s feelings are not entirely subjective, at China Joy in July 2024,Xiaohongshu officially announced that its monthly active users reached 330 million, including more than 110 million gamersThe growth rate of game notes increased by 88% year-on-year, and the growth rate of game notes exposure increased by more than 149% year-on-year.
There are a number of new popular games here, plus Blizzard’s return to the national server last year.The game industry has ushered in a new cycle, and Xiaohongshu, as an emerging mainstream marketing position, has naturally undertaken the dividends of growth.
More importantly, although the platform accounts for a large proportion of female users, it is not only limited to female-oriented games, but has gradually become a “core player community” for many games with strong social attributes or IP attributes. This core position is reflected in the atmosphere of the player community, the deep integration of platform ecology and game culture, and the IP marketing strategy that manufacturers increasingly rely on.
Of course, just like the two sides of the coin, the deeper players take root in this fertile soil of this highly sticky community, the more distinct the sense of belonging and potential “backlash” they feel, which is the complex background of the Xiaohongshu game community that makes people “love and hate”. In the following, we will unveil the A and B sides of this ecosystem from the three perspectives of players, platforms, and manufacturers.
01 Community A and B sides from the player’s perspective
According to the sharing of some in-depth gamers, in the discussion posts about the game in Xiaohongshu, in addition to the discussion of the game content itself, controversies and players’ secondary creation of the game, it may also include some offline activities, cosplay makeup, commissions, design purchase and resale of game peripherals, etc. Together, these contents make up Xiaohongshu’s gaming community.
Players are happy to share everything related to the game on the community platform, and there are also some community mental differences and changes beyond these widely known perspectives.
First of all, the Xiaohongshu community has gradually become the default term “game community” for many players.
Some players showed “New Position” that many games with a lot of controversy among players, and whenever a new player posts a Xiaohongshu note asking about the recommendation of entering the pit, he will almost get a similar answer: “Look less at the community”.
On the one hand, the “community” here refers to the content of Xiaohongshu’s game section. If you go to Douyin, you will probably get the same answer, and under some community-oriented remarks on other platforms, many of the content carried is from Xiaohongshu.
On the other hand, the “see less community” points to the pressure on players caused by the density of controversy in the Xiaohongshu game community, and due to the decentralization of Xiaohongshu itself, the parallel model of double waterfall graphic video and single waterfall video, players will be addicted to the highly time-sensitive and high-trust density of recommended streams in Xiaohongshu.
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Therefore, some players once revealed this entanglement to “New Position”: “From time to time, other players who have created (harmed) me will appear on Xiaohongshu, and my friend suggested that I can brush Douyin more, so there will not be so many controversial speeches, just watch the second creation happily.” But Xiaohongshu can quickly establish the information cocoon I want, and I think the things I block will generally not be brushed again, but Douyin is useless to block it. ”
This directly points to the difference in the minds of players on other social media platforms: the comfort zone of efficient information acquisition is easy to establish, but the distance between other players is closer, and it is easier to be harmed and influenced. In addition, players can skip the game to get game-related fun directly within the community, as well as reject the game and even influence the flow through the game community.The most typical example is the controversy faced by the female-oriented game “Like Kite”, which was launched last year.
It is reported that after the launch of “Like Kite” last year, some game content caused discomfort and doubts among players, and in the Xiaohongshu Rukite community, gamers spontaneously started to collectively boycott and supervise the flow of money. ”
Under the decentralized mechanism of Xiaohongshu itself, all kinds of players can still form a consensus, and such a consensus will have a greater impact on the game.
This means that players connect through the game IP, but there is no need to actually play the game. For the Xiaohongshu platform, the community activity is still there, but for the game, the daily activity of players in the game will be really affected.
Although these games are the “Party A” of the Xiaohongshu platform, and the placement of “Party A” on the platform is one of the important sources of income for the platform, if the game itself really causes “public anger” in the player community, the platform cannot help completely cover it up.
Therefore, it is not difficult to see that for Xiaohongshu, users’ trust and stickiness in the platform are more important, after all, this is the basic plate for its sustainable development, and this relatively further promotes players to take root on Xiaohongshu.
02 Xiaohongshu needs a game ecosystem
From the perspective of the platform, the most popular games in Xiaohongshu largely represent the Xiaohongshu game ecological market.
According to the observation statistics of “New Position” (as of July 9), the top six fans of Xiaohongshu’s official account under the current game category are “Egg Boy Party” with 4.43 million, “Honor of Kings” with 3.3 million, “Genshin Impact” with 3.09 million, “Love and Deep Space” with 2.23 million, “Honkai: Star Rail” with 2.19 million, and “Peace Elite” with 1.9 million.
It is not difficult to see from the above game types that in addition to national-level popular games, the dominance is two-dimensional games and female-oriented games, and these game communities often have more extensions beyond game content.
From the perspective of the above players, it is not difficult to see that this kind of game community is a powerful supplement to the entire community ecology of Xiaohongshu.
According to Gray Dolphin data, the interest dimension of user portraits under the hashtags of a variety of games, in addition to “two-dimensional”, will also involve life records, technology digital, beauty and fashion and other fields, and these are also the core areas of Xiaohongshu.
At the same time, especially for games with IP attributes, the player base is relatively young, which is the main group of consumers and socializers, and some games may be helping Xiaohongshu cultivate the next generation of mainstream consumer groups.
For example, the most popular game “Egg Boy Party” in Xiaohongshu, the age portrait of Xiaohongshu users under the #蛋仔派对# topic, accounted for 39.9% under the age of 18, far exceeding other popular games on Xiaohongshu.
In addition, although the user portraits of these popular game topics have most female users in common, there are still differences in specifics: the proportion of male users of “Peace Elite” is significantly higher than that of the market; As a female-oriented game, “Love and Deep Space” has the highest proportion of female users; As a two-dimensional game, “Genshin Impact” is characterized by the proportion of people under the age of 18 and the proportion of people aged 18-24.
On the other hand, the revenue of the game sector may be accelerating the commercialization process of Xiaohongshu.
In October last year, some media revealed that Xiaohongshu’s revenue in the first quarter of 2024 exceeded $1 billion for the first time, and its net profit reached $200 million, a significant increase from $40 million in the same period last year. This strong growth performance is mainly due to Xiaohongshu’s increased advertising efforts to Gen Z female consumers.
The most obvious change in the consumer market of Generation Z women in the first quarter of last year did not come from FMCG, but from a number of women-oriented games launched in the first quarter.
In addition, according to the latest data from DataEye Game Observation, in May this year, Xiaohongshu’s game market traffic increased by 16% month-on-month compared with April, a record high. Among them, the information flow rose by 22%, and Xiaohongshu’s game sector continued to exert force.
All in all, whether from the perspective of Xiaohongshu’s own community ecological construction or Xiaohongshu’s commercialization process, Xiaohongshu needs the game ecosystem to continue to penetrate.
03 IP games need Xiaohongshu’s “compound interest”
Due to the high stickiness of IP gamers, the game-related discussions generated by players under the Xiaohongshu mechanism can continue to drive popularity and maintain stickiness, which can form a strong cycle with the content of the game itself and the publicity and distribution on social platforms, and even a snowball trend.
Of course, a game will definitely not be marketed only on Xiaohongshu. On the one hand, games need to reach more potential players by expanding the scale of purchases, and on the other hand, games also need to create player stickiness with “compound interest” value through IP operations.
And how do you measure whether a game can achieve both scale and IP stickiness build? Here is an indicator to see the comparison of the scale of topic views on Douyin and Xiaohongshu: the higher the ratio, the lower the stickiness of the game itself.
Take the same type of games “Egg Boy Party” and “Dream Star” as examples:
#蛋仔派对#对在抖音和小红书的浏览量分别为2618亿次, 60.8 billion times, with a ratio of about 4:1.
#元梦之星#在抖音和小红书的浏览量分别为296亿次, 1.7 billion times, with a ratio of about 17:1.
It is worth noting that “Egg Boy Party” was launched earlier, while “Yuanmeng Star” was launched at the end of 2023, and in the first quarter of 2024, the game industry marketing has consciously approached Xiaohongshu.
Compare the two female games “Beyond the World” and “Love and Deep Space” launched in the first quarter of 2024 vertically, the former has a ratio of 4:1, and the latter even reaches 2:1, the highest ratio among popular games at present.
Gamer stickiness often points to “compound interest”, and when activating a player costs the same, players with community stickiness may produce more krypton gold behavior.
Judging from recent cases, the version of “Honkai: Star Rail” launched on July 2 topped the best-selling list in China, Japan and South Korea, surpassing Honor of Kings and Douyin, which have long dominated the list in China.
Before this, Xiaohongshu players spontaneously actively promoted or produced strategies in the community, and would congratulate the game company after reaching the top, which should be the dream of all game companies.
However, as mentioned in Chapter 1, players can also skip the game and directly get game-related fun within the community, or even reject the game, and then influence the flow through the game community.
High community stickiness is a double-edged sword, and game makers are clearly not prepared for this.
