How we grew the audience of an online game with the help of famous video bloggers

Client

Drakensang is an online game made by Bigpoint GmbH, a German video game developer. The company develops stand-alone browser-based games as well as social network games. Bigpoint runs a gaming portal website with a number of browser-based massively multiplayer online role playing games where it has over 200 million registered users.

Goal

To maintain the number of active players and attract new audience.

Solution

Russian gamers have known browser-based Drakensang for quite a while, that is why RMAA Group’s task was to increase brand awareness and loyalty of the Russian audience.

To attract new players, we chose promotion channels that had not been used before. We proposed our client to place ads in two magazines for gamers, namely Igromania and Strana Igr (Rus. Game Land), TV ads (federal advertising on MTV [now Pyatnitsa! TV channel, Rus. Friday! ] and A-One cable channel [ads in game reviews]), and to use viral marketing. As for SMM, SEO, and media context ads, the client did it by means of its own marketing department, while our team concentrated on the viral component.

We based on the popular format of Let’s Play where a user documents the playthrough of a game and accompanies it with his or her comments. This format is popular among Drakensang target audience. We organized a contest between popular Russian bloggers and launched a viral marketing campaign. Showmen from Mne Nravitsya (Rus. I Like It) and Sam Nickel, a video blogger, were playing Drakensang at unusual places—in a bathroom, in a night forest—and leveling up their characters. A blogger who would have a character of the highest level would win.

The gaming process and participants’ relationships were videotaped. Then the videos were published on Youtube and spread in social media.

Result

One of the goals of the viral campaign was to generate 300,000 views for each out of five videos. We accomplished this goal and generated 1.5 million views. We kept already involved players and attracted 2,500 new active users.

The client was satisfied with the project:

“RMAA Group has been a greatly partner for our campaign.
Our collaboration with RMAA Group has allowed us to enter new territories and collect a lot of valuable intelligence on new marketing channels and attracting new audiences. RMAA Group`s team has been a greatly partner for our campaign and we look forward to working with them again”.
Thyge Backenin, Media Marketing Manager, Bigpoint GmbH