Video Games: How Content Creators Build Lasting In-Game Experiences

For marketers accustomed to traditional mediums, creating content for a gaming audience can quickly feel overwhelming in scope. Yet, with an audience surging upwards of 2.7 billion gamers across the globe, brands can no longer afford to ignore the unlimited creative potential that the gaming community has to offer.

While video games may hold endless creative possibilities for marketers to utilize, they also present unique creative and technical challenges to do so effectively. In a recent Virtual Town Square – hosted by APR’s Managing Director of Strategy & Innovation, Jared Yeater – a panel of industry-leading experts from Epic Games, Frameplay, and VaynerSports discussed different ways brands may successfully navigate this burgeoning space.

What This Process Actually Looks Like

Beginning the trek into in-game advertising – especially eSports – is a “long-term investment,” as Darren Glover of VaynerSports states. “Brands should avoid looking at this as a one-time thing. There’s a start to getting into the community, there’s a midpoint where you really start to develop that relationship, and then there’s that [ever-evolving] point where you can kick-off and ask for a sale.” Advertisers should expect these relationships to take time, whether that be “a four, six, twelve, or eighteen month-long opportunity with a content creator, eSports organization, or publisher.”

As far as production technology is concerned, Jonathan Troughton of Frameplay reminds advertisers that “the technology for creative is already there. The game engine already exists – so it’s about how advertisers and their agencies adequately utilize that technology” to solidify their messaging. The sky’s the limit, here, although the deliverables can become quite substantial. For example, developing these experiences requires a large deck of “potential versions” that a player may encounter, depending on the positioning and timing of the player’s interaction. “You don’t always have control over when and where these gamers are or how they’re playing, so once we have these multiple creative versions in our system, we can then call forward [the relevant version] that matches the gamer’s unique positioning with their correct locations in real-time.”

Recontextualizing Audience Dynamics

Gamers are an expansive, global audience that consistently shatters stereotypes. For example, at the time of this publishing: 70% of gamers are 18 years old or older, 46% of gamers are women, and the average gamer is actually 34 years old, owns a house, and has children (source)! Additionally, it would be a mistake to define the gaming audience as one solely comprised of people who play video games; Twitch, the largest game streaming platform currently available, averages 2.6 million viewers at any given time of the day (source). Our definitions of “gaming audiences” must expand to reflect this.

Glover stresses the importance of an expansive and collective view of gaming audiences as communities, rather than demographics. In eSports, brands that “begin looking towards gamers [they] can connect with have to ask, ‘what is this particular gamer’s brand?’ These are entrepreneurs that have grown their own communities – their own brands – on the backs of their two-thumbs or hand-and-mouse… It’s less about how brands connect with gamers, and it’s more about how brands connect with these various pockets and communities within gaming.”

Advertisers Must Match Gamer Expectations

In the past, advertisers frequently took content created for traditional platforms and transplanted them into video games (i.e. billboard ads across an in-game cityscape). This will not suffice. SallyAnn Houghton of Epic Games summarizes the importance of recontextualizing the entire approach to content creation for a gaming audience.  Fortnite is exemplary in that “the game itself has become its own platform” for creators to collaborate within (i.e. holding virtual concerts within the game itself), overthrowing the traditional hierarchy of gamers, creators, and viewers, alike.

Houghton refers to this approach as the “collision of IP.” She also states that the most successful gaming experiences “are about high-quality, clever ideas that can only be accomplished through a video game – ditching the traditional advertising handbook. It’s about giving the community something that they would be thankful for in order to then draw a crowd; not invading their spaces with something like a billboard.”

Troughton echoes this sentiment, adding that “developers are creating art – spending a massive amount of time building these games and these [gaming] engines. Content creators have to at least match that same standard of quality these developers have created for their games… We are talking about an immersive world, so you have to think smart and think about what the community actually wants in order to be effective.” Joining with the correct creative partners capable of bringing your messaging up-to-par with these 3-dimensional worlds is instrumental in matching the expectations of a gaming audience.

Conclusion

Jillian Gibbs, the founder & CEO of APR, concludes with this key takeaway: “Now is the time for marketers to get involved with gaming – to understand these platforms, to understand their opportunities. Now is a good time to experiment and learn, because this is a growing arena. If they don’t do so now, they risk being left behind.”