Ready to harness the power of UGC gaming, build your own interactive Party App, generate loyalty from Super Users and ensure that your brand is equipped for the future of the internet? Reach out to us HERE.

A new era of the internet is approaching, one that requires a new kind of engagement from top brands. And industry leaders are taking notice.

When Bob Iger returned to Disney as CEO in 2022, he met with colleagues to discuss demographic trends. What he learned stunned him: Gen Z and Gen Alpha were spending as much screen time on video games as on TV and movies. “The conclusion I reached was that we have to be there,” he said, “and we have to be as soon as we possibly can in a very compelling way.”

The result, announced earlier this year: a $1.5 billion deal with Fortnite creator Epic Games, and a major indicator of how user-generated content, or UGC, is becoming a central pillar of branding in today’s market. Disney and Epic will team up to build a virtual Disney universe, where consumers can interact with the studio’s IP in new ways, playing and creating games based on familiar characters, and buying digital goods. As Iger realized, UGC allows brands to stay relevant by co-creating with their audience, marking a shift in the control of IP. By entrusting elements of their IP to the community, brands empower users to shape what is considered cool and relevant, thus driving scalability and ensuring cultural resonance.

UGC In Game Like Setting Needs to Be on Every Brand’s Mind

Disney isn’t the only major company that’s betting big on UGC. In May, in partnership with Roblox, Netflix launched Nextworld, a “digital theme park” featuring games and experiences based on shows like Stranger Things and Cobra Kai. The platform invites users to “dive deeper” into its offerings, interacting with characters and forging new connections with the brand.

Even fashion staples like Balenciaga, which has partnered with Fortnite to offer retail items within the game, are seeing how UGC gaming can impact their brand.

After partnering with Epic on a proprietary game, Balenciaga saw the value of continuing to engage with the UGC gaming space. “It made total sense to me that we collaborate further by creating these authentic Balenciaga looks for Fortnite and a new physical Fortnite clothing series for our stores,” Balenciaga artistic director Demna Gvasalia said.

“The entire experience of Fortnite is centered around self-expression, player agency, and the ability to live out a fantasy of portraying characters and outfits that people want to wear,” Epic president Adam Sussman said in 2021.

Currently, there are more than 3.3 billion global gamers, up from 2.6 billion in 2019. By 2027, the gaming market will be worth an estimated $312 billion.

Combine the power of UGC with the growth potential of gaming, and the possibilities are limitless. Simply put, this is a strategy that needs to be on every brand’s mind.

A New Internet Is on the Way, Powered by Super Users

Any brand that seeks to stay relevant in the coming years needs to engage with a core truth: the internet is entering a new era based around four specific trends - gaming, AI, XR, and UGC. And this development requires companies to reimagine their online presence in a way that mirrors the adaptations of industry leaders.

The key players in this new phase of the internet? Super Users, the most loyal and frequent users of a given brand. Making up 24% of the U.S. population, these consumers spend nearly double the amount of time consuming media as all other users. They represent the core audience where brands should focus their energy and efforts. Engaging these Super Users through gaming, particularly UGC gaming, is crucial, a way to invest in the users who are most likely to invest in your company.

But how does that engagement actually work? 

Gen Alpha and Gen Z consumers don’t engage with traditional one-sided brand conversations like past generations. Traditional media channels and social media platforms are a place for consumption, and don't lend themselves to create a truly two-sided engaging experience. Younger generations are gravitating towards platforms where they can communicate authentically, build relationships, and contribute — and this is where games and UGC platforms are coming into play more and more. The Disney-Epic deal is the first example of what will be the start of a systematic shift, with brands offering a UGC interactive experience and relinquishing more IP to consumers than they ever have before, in the form of a gaming platform.

For brands looking to engage Super Users by building immersive, interactive, gamified worlds, several familiar options are available, each with its own drawbacks. Working directly with Epic or Roblox promises to be too slow of a process, while launching an experience through Roblox can be extremely expensive, and tethers you to their timeline and parameters. Building a world from scratch, meanwhile, requires extensive experience and development talent that is beyond the scope of most brands.

How Genies Can Help Your Brand Adapt

Here’s where Genies comes in. We’re equipped to guide brands through this critical, make-or-break transition to a new era of the internet. At Genies, we believe that all major brands will reskin themselves for this “new internet”, evolving web pages into immersive, interactive, gamified experiences.

The combination of technology and art is exactly what Genies offers its brand partners via Party Apps. We provide brands with the tools, the infrastructure and the services needed to re-skin themselves for the future of the internet. As part of our white-glove treatment, Genies will design your own branded Party App, personify the brand in avatar form, facilitate first-of-its-kind celebrity collabs, implement UGC frameworks, provide customizable assets and enable further engagement. 

Partnering with Genies allows brands to access a set of tools that offer the potential for limitless expansion and customization for virtual items — exactly the kind of technology that will prove endlessly inspiring to creative Super Users.

We have invested years of development into creating tools and technology that allow brands to quickly, economically, and effectively generate their own UGC platform (Party Apps). Our tech gives you access to foundational frameworks for scaled UGC opportunities, with strong earning potential as well as the kind of appeal that fosters community and fandom among younger users. 

Access to Hollywood: Genies has a proven track record as pop culture’s favorite avatar: We have built affinity and recognition with the hardest demographics to capture — Gen A, Gen Z and Hollywood’s most iconic tastemakers including OG Genies like Paris Hilton, Migos or Justin Bieber and recent newcomers like Lay Bankz, JVKE or Lil Durk. The celebrity avatars, alongside avatars for brands, can be available in gameplay and assets. More importantly for UGC, creators can use them to build their own unique creations. 

Typically, when companies offer a UGC build, they require clients to follow a very specific standard or rules. But Genies’ proprietary Autorigging Technology solves this problem, offering complete interoperability and, in the process, opening up enormous potential for the design of avatars, digital fashion and virtual props and objects.

Autorigging offers the capability for brands to generate any 3D asset possible. Whether it's a dress, a shield, a dragon or a human, all of these assets automatically work with each other because of our Autorigging framework. The result is that users can create any number of imaginative experiences or assets within a brand’s universe.

Why Genies Should Be Your Default UGC Gaming Solution

In the UGC era, this concept becomes incredibly potent because it creates a collaborative space, where users feel empowered to help shape the future of the brands they engage with. Brands must now think with community in mind first, allowing the fan base to help them define their brand identity and path.

The immersive, interactive, gamified experience is rapidly becoming the industry standard. And as brands seek to redefine themselves for this new reality, Genies provides clear advantages over any other option.

Ready to harness the power of UGC gaming, build your own interactive Party App, generate loyalty from Super Users and ensure that your brand is equipped for the future of the internet? Reach out to us HERE.