An egg hunt that multiplied engagement fivefold

This project is FCA's community work in miniature: storytelling, gamification and a sense of team, put together to make something people remember and take part in together.

Background and goals

We wanted to wake up our own community server, Slash FR, for Easter. The aim was to strengthen the community by sharply increasing activity and the time people spend there. So we designed a bespoke event mixing storytelling, gamification and a collective spirit. The audience: Slash FR members, community managers and Discord admins, people who are busy by nature.

How we approached it

For this event we turned the Discord server itself into the playing field, with an egg hunt you step right into. Easter eggs of varying rarity appear at random through the conversation, and any member can react instantly to collect them, earning more or fewer carrots, the currency at the heart of the game. A team system turns the competition into a collective one, which deepens involvement and builds a group feeling.

Every game mechanic, the live handling of teams and the way items appear in context all come from complex systems our developers built for the occasion. Because we know the platform deeply, we can design interactive ideas that go past the usual, with a warmer and more personal feel.

The bystander problem

Too often people will not even join a community event, convinced in advance that they stand no chance of finishing on the podium. We call this the bystander problem. On our server, which brings together a lot of community managers and Discord admins, people who are genuinely busy, we removed that barrier: no sign-up, no “Take part” button, the game starts the moment you arrive. Someone who has never posted is drawn into becoming a participant, all the more so because how to join is immediately clear. The result: even the members most buried in their own projects take part and get the most out of it.

Team spirit through the HypeSquad houses

To pull people together, we built the event around the HypeSquad houses, a Discord system everyone already knows. It creates teams people want to play for and gets the competition going, while grounding everything in a world participants recognise: Discord itself.

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Several side events filled out the week:

Fortnite, brought into Discord 

A battle royale where players face each other on a dedicated server. After a phase of gathering items, each can ban an opponent or shield themselves. At the end, one is left standing.

‍Podcasts broadcast live on Discord

We launched several new podcasts covering a range of subjects around Discord and our community: news, debates and what goes on behind the scenes of the server. Contests put the creativity of server builders in the spotlight, judged on criteria such as how well they held to the theme and how original they were.

Other activities

Other fixtures paced the week: online Werewolf, Minecraft mini-games, rounds of Among Us. The range of games meant everyone found something that suited them and could earn points towards the event, while the community grew closer and more involved.

Rewards and prizes

To give participants something to play for, we offered real and exclusive rewards: Discord Nitro subscriptions, deliveries of new stickers of our mascot, and exclusive banners available only through our events. Giveaways ran alongside, which added to the involvement and the enthusiasm.

Fairness and safety

To keep the game both fair and safe, we built our own anti-cheat system. Made for the occasion, it lets us spot and remove suspicious or automated behaviour, which protects the integrity of the event and the peace of mind of everyone taking part.

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Results

It worked, and by a wide margin:

• More than 20,000 messages exchanged in a single day, ten times the usual average.
  
• Active members up 150 %, with more than 700 taking part.
  
• Time spent on the server multiplied by five during the event.
• A community pulled together around something strong and shared.

Beyond the numbers, Slash FR turned its Discord server into a genuine social space, well past what gaming servers usually are. The project shows what Discord can do as a lever for engagement and community life, and what we bring to gamification, event design and reading an audience.

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