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cellerityweb · 6 years

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A Virtual Experience That Made A Real Difference [part I]

War. One of the most popular and never depleted themes accompanying our widely understood (pop)culture. On the pages of fantasy books, it brought wealth and glory to victorious heroes. In real life however …

War is ugly and it mostly brought and still brings suffering and misery to (almost) all involved. But always, no matter if real or fictional, revived from the past or imagined in a distant future, war brings change. For us, fortunately, the war was virtual. But the change it brought was as real as it gets.

Back in 2014 we released »This War of Mine« – an »indie game« allowing players to experience a simulation of what it is like to be a civilian in a city torn by military conflict. It became a game changer for us. Not only because of the overall sales or critical acclaim, which were more than satisfying, but first and foremost because of the impact it created. It simply made people care. Not only about gameplay but also about the subject it touched. And for us it proved that games can evoke empathy and bring experiences that shouldn’t just be applied to a fun/not fun scale but rather rated, based on their overall impact.

From the publishing point of view, This War of Mine, being a somewhat niche survival simulator, allowed us to break through to the so-called »mainstream«, changing the way we think about advertising and game-focused communication as a whole.

»The Shelter« (Concept Development)

The first rough version of the game differed a lot from what you know as This War of Mine. It wasn’t even based on war as such. What welcomed you in the initial prototype was a post-apocalyptic wasteland and a half-destroyed bunker serving as a shelter for a group of anonymous survivors. So, »Shelter« became our internal codename for the game, that we used for a significant period of the development process. Visually, it was cool. Even as a basic prototype, we kind of liked how it looked. But emotionally… well, it just wasn’t enough. It lacked something. Even though all of the elements were kind of ok, the sum of them did not work for us. If we wanted to make it stand out from the crowd, we had to bring it to another level. The question was how? We had »the shelter« so the main question was who lived in it. Grzegorz, our CEO, suggested that it should be victims of war – regular people suffering from the conflict that broke out around them. That concept clicked with the team as it gave the missing layer to the game. We felt we could build upon.

What came after was basically a lot of research. A lot. Inspiration came from multiple articles, history we knew from school, as well as from stories told by our parents and grandparents. Being a Pole made the process a bit easier, as we could not complain about the lack of source material. History gave us much, and current news did the rest. Unfortunately, you do not have to try very hard to find »fresh« stories about conflicts affecting modern societies.

After few months of intense work, we landed with a new prototype. One much closer to the final shape of the game. Sure, it needed a lot of polishing – but it worked! At this point we felt we had something truly special. Something that, once you sucked your teeth into it, stuck with you. That became both a curse and a blessing. You obviously had to play it to realize its potential. Not having the track record nor established franchise, we had to build the buzz and interest way before the game appeared on digital shelves of Steam and other distribution platforms.

Shaping the Brand

The common perception is that to succeed you have to be innovative. Break the rules, they say, find your way. The truth is that »new« means difficult. People are afraid of new. They mostly prefer »same old« as predictable, safe and measurable. This is why, amongst a few other reasons, the AAA market is dominated by long running franchises. Investing a lot of money, you crave for as much predictability as possible. And new is far from being predictable. It can pay off, but there is no guarantee of that. With no benchmarks, no historical data, it basically is a bungee jump. On a freshly unpacked rope. So, we jumped. Making the knots in mid-air.

An early prototype of This War of Mine, internally codenamed “The Shelter”.

At this point we knew we had a good game, but we were the only ones with that knowledge. And that is the issue with every new brand/product appearing on the market. You have to build its perception from scratch. What is it? What does it offer? And first and foremost – why the hell should people care? You need an answer. You need a solid brand. Branding is mostly about building a well-defined, coherent presence on the market. Creating a perception and then preferably a purchase intent by associating particular feelings and connotations with your product, service or whatever you have to offer. In our case – a game. There are multiple methods of constructing a strong brand but no matter which path you choose, one thing stays invariable – you have to be relatable. To find something people can easily understand and, in a perfect scenario, have an opinion about. If that opinion is good or bad, that is secondary as sometimes negative feelings can work in your favour as well.

We had a war-themed game and »war« as such was at that time (and honestly not much has changed since then) a commodity in gaming. There were and are so many titles based around conflicts. Modern, historical, sci-fi, you name it. Just check the Steam tags. You are going to get hundreds of results for »war« alone, not to mention all the variations. That meant that the market was cluttered, but also full of potential. Especially considering the fact that the majority of these games shared a somewhat similar and slightly clichéd perspective. No matter the platform or genre, they usually allowed you as a player to embody a superhuman protagonist, running and gunning (alternatively moving units), trying to meet objectives that were different interpretations of winning by destruction. »Action & confrontation« were the core that everything was built around. No empathy involved. Not much of a reflection either (besides few gems like Ubisoft’s »Valiant Hearts: The Great War« or »Spec Ops: The Line« by Yager Interactive).

We decided to use that trend as a springboard for our communication strategy. This War of Mine was to be the »rebel« – questioning the well-established status quo by introducing gamers to a new perspective on war. A strong idea, as we felt, but an easy one to implement. To succeed we had to use all the means at hand to underline our dissidence and prove its value.

Keeping it Short

What made the process of bringing the initial strategy to life more difficult was the fact that English is not our native language. The struggle started with the game’s title. The first version we had had was War of Mine and honestly we were quite happy with it, till one of our English-speaking colleagues asked if we actually had »mines« in our game? And if miners literally fought each other? The answer was »no«. So, we had to iterate. The funny part is that what helped was Guns N’ Roses and their song »Sweet Child O’Mine«. Take that, all you teachers dissing our music tastes in the 90s!

After we had adjusted the title, it definitely worked better. The structure itself was catchy and it stood out among the other titles. To make things even, better it was descriptive and pulled all the right strings. »I am the game about war« it was saying, »but with a personal perspective«. Having this part laid out, we moved to the tagline. First of all, we felt it could become handy as part of planned activities and secondly, being able to enclose your whole premise in a short sentence organizes your communication and helps with the prioritization of what and how to say it. A good tagline should do for your communication what a good punchline does for a joke. Basically sum it up, but in a smart way. Being simple and being obvious are not the same things. We wanted people to easily understand what This War of Mine was and intrigue them a bit. As David Ogilvy (note: a former British advertising tycoon) once said »You can’t bore people into buying your product«.

We wrote a whole bunch of proposals. Some were too long (»In war there are those who fight and those who try to survive«) or too obvious. It took us a while but we ended up with: »In war, not everyone is a soldier«. It was memorable, had kind of a melody to it and most importantly, provided the shift of perspective we craved for. Also, you could easily fit it on the key visuals and that is always helpful.

The Value of Consistency

Having the whole foundation laid out, it was crucial for us to maintain a coherent tonality. We wanted our campaign to be recognizable. Remember, that having no track record, we had to build the game’s perception from scratch. Seeing the ad for the next »Call of Duty« you know what to expect. Buying the game from Paradox, you also can predict what it would offer in terms of experience. Encountering This War of Mine, you knew close to nothing, so establishing its’ identity was crucial. We wanted people to get more and more familiar with our game every time they encountered one of our marketing assets, so after some time they would be able to recognize This War of Mine on the spot. To achieve that, all the pieces, while not repetitive, had to have the same denominator – the premise laid out in the initial strategy. We not only had to maintain consistent aesthetics but also to focus on key features and values specific for our game. We decided that each and every piece we were about to produce had to be

– Serious – there was no space for jokes or winks. No breaking of the fourth wall. We were aware that we were touching serious matter, so we wanted to act respectfully.

– Non-military – This War of Mine was all about civilians. And we wanted to maintain that perspective all the time as this was one of the differentiators you could notice on the spot.

– Apolitical – while politics are highly subjective, human consequences are universal. Getting into politics you can way to easily divide people and trigger unnecessary conflicts. That was not our goal. We wanted to create and promote a human-centric experience people could relate to no matter what their views or beliefs.

– Insightfulness & humanism (two in one basically) – we wanted you, as a player, to identify and immerse. That was an important part of the experience which our game offered and we had to translate it into marketing, not losing anything in the process.

With that mainframe we were able to develop a sort of »language« that we tried to maintain for the whole campaign. It paid off, as every time we released a new piece of content (no matter the medium or format) it added to the overall perception of our game. With every release we stood out a bit more as people got a stronger and clearer image of what our game was and what it was not.

»Gamers just Wanna Have Fun«

Of course, sometimes being coherent meant we had to say »NO« to our gamers, and that is never easy. Especially when you have a committed and highly engaged community. For example, sometime after the release we started to receive requests for a zombie mode. It is understandable as »This War of Mine« has all the elements making it the perfect candidate for that sort of conversion. It is a survival game after all, with people crumped in half-destroyed buildings, trying to survive as long as possible. That’s something half of the zombie flicks are based on. But we did not want to do that as we strongly felt it would blur the identity of the game we had worked so hard on. Fortunately people understood our approach and respected our decision. The identity we created, while well-defined, was grim and quite far from what gamers are usually used to. That raised quite obvious questions about the »fun factor« of our game. But as Pawel – one of our writers – said while interviewed by Kotaku, with This War of Mine we never aimed at fun but rather a meaningful experience. We were ready to sacrifice what was necessary to maintain the big idea that fuelled the game. »Weren’t you scared?« , you may ask. Of course we were. But that was the only reasonable solution. There was no middle ground there if we were to achieve what we aimed for. I still meet people telling me that This War of Mine is their favourite game… they will never ever play again. And that is OK. Some people replay it multiple times. Some don’t. But they seldomly forget the experience they had with the game.

Putting the Cogs into Motion

Being indie meant that we had astrictly limited marketing budget, so our campaign relied mostly on widely understood digital media and key gaming events coverage. »Owned« and »earned« channels were crucial as we could afford only so much when it came to paid activities. Basically, we divided most of our attention between video production/distribution, social media presence, PR/e-PR activities and event coverage. Everything else followed but considering our headcount and the scale of the overall marketing investment, we couldn’t add much on top of these four pillars.

Video Marketing

Limited budget meant limited range of available touchpoints.

Video became the backbone of our production as the most appealing and most willingly consumed type of content at the time (and nowadays as well). It is no secret that game marketing heavily relies on videos. Trailers, »let’s plays«, »dev diaries«, you name it. Having that in mind, we planned all the key points in our campaign around some type of video content. Obviously we could not afford high fidelity, fully fledged cinematic trailers to which people have been accustomed by top tier AAA publishers, but a good idea works even when written on a napkin, as we believed. Over two years we released over a dozen if not more videos but few of them are especially worth mentioning. The announcement trailer aimed at introducing people to the core premise of the game. It was all about the new perspective on war. As it was the first one, we wanted to use a little trick basing on what our viewers were accustomed to. The idea was to open as if we had the next action-focused shooter and then make the shift introducing the civilians’ perspective. That way we could gain the necessary attention and present our idea in a clear and efficient manner. Simple as it was, it worked brilliantly. We didn’t show the gameplay, or even say what the genre was. The premise of the game proved to be enough to spark the conversation.

We introduced gameplay much later on in the campaign but even when our communication became much more gameplay-oriented, we stuck to the tonality and all the strategic assumptions. The stories we were telling and the features we were revealing were new every time but at the same time each video was expanding on the »civilians in a time of war« concept. No exceptions. Preparing our first gameplay trailer we decided to use Polish song, titled »Zegarmistrz wiatła Purpurowy« as a background to the story we were to tell. We were concerned about whether it’s gonna work, considering the fact that most of our audience doesn’t know the language, but finally we had decided that the emotional package it carries is language-neutral and should work universally. The reception of the video proved us right. The funny part is that our video enhanced the popularity of the song abroad and right now you can find a lot of comments on Youtube by people who actually found the song because of our trailer.

Another video, which we consider to be a milestone, happened not long before the release of the game. Some time into the campaign we received a message from Emir – a survivor of the siege of Sarajevo – who complimented the game and compared it to his own personal experiences. Fascinated by his story, we invited him to share it with us, and he happened to be kind enough to accept the invitation. Shortly afterwards, he visited us in Warsaw where we taped a video together that later, supplemented with elements of gameplay, became the launch trailer. The lesson here is that sometimes the universe works in your favour and gives you opportunities to learn, to create and to enhance whatever you do. What is crucial is to push all you have to make each and every one of these opportunities count. Not always will everything work but once it does – it does for real.

Patryk Grzeszczuk

is Marketing Director at 11 bit Studios,

focusing on game marketing and

digital communication

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