devtrackers.gg
/u/the_cactoupus tweeted this thread on how Riot handled messaging behind all the announcements during L10's stream:
External link →5 WAYS TO ANNOUNCE RISKY/CONTROVERSIAL VIDEO GAMES
Early last year, there was some fear/concern at Riot about our plans to announce a number of mobile games and a card game.
All the announcements ended up going really well.
ITT I'm gonna share some strategies we used. >🧵1/22
STRAT 1: OWN YOUR BULLsh*t
So the first game we announced was Teamfight Tactics AKA @TFT. At the time, there was only one other game in the genre: the OG Dota Auto Chess mod. Frankly, we didn't want the reaction to our announcement to be "lol nice DAC clone."
The solution here was to be honest and talk about TFT with players the same way we were talking about it internally.
Instead of trying to dance around DAC, @Riot_Beernana called it out by name in our announcement.
Players liked that we didn't try to bullsh*t anybody about it.
Tangent: It was important to introduce a name for the genre. The existence of the concept "autobattler" gave us and others permission to play in the space.
I believe using "autobattler" in our post and our press releases led directly to the term's widespread adoption. Example: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENcuJX5U4AA_qgb?format=png&name=small
Okay, so STRAT 2: LEAN INTO THE MEMES
Sometimes, you just need players to know that you "get it." Playing with a spicy meme is one powerful way to do that.
TFT Mobile was the first mobile game announced by Riot, and we were nervous about it. Mostly because of memes.
If you don't already know, a couple of years back, Blizzard suffered a lot of backlash (unjustly imo) to their announcement of Diablo: Immortal, a mobile game. One line from a dev bewildered by the response ("Don't you guys have phones?") became a massive meme in gaming circles. Over time, posting "dONt U gUyS hAVe phONeS?" became a way for gamers to signal displeasure with ANY studio making a mobile game. It's a way for players to mock and punish devs who try to expand to new audiences beyond their core audience of PC players. Devs hate this meme. I agree with @draggles's theory that this meme was a product of a particular moment of heightened anti-mobile-gaming sentiment, which is now starting to recede as more good AAA mobile games come out.
So for our TFT mobile announce, I wanted us to PLAY WITH AND SUBVERT the meme.
This idea was not super popular internally at Riot. Everybody felt sorry for the innocent Blizzard dev who'd gotten caught in the crossfire, and nobody wanted to attract any of that heat to themselves.
Nonetheless, we decided to announce TFT Mobile this way:
The line was a hit, we avoided backlash, and players are hyped for TFT mobile. The takeaway here is: It's hard to weaponize something against someone when they've just taken the weapon and done a funny dance with it.
Subverting a meme in this way strips it of its power.
One downside: Dancing with a meme that caused pain to other people—in this case, people at Blizzard in paritcular—caused some to interpret our subversiveness as us taking a shot at Blizzard, which wasn't our intention. (Would love my Blizz friends' perspectives on this, btw.)
Anyway.. STRAT 3: SHOW THE LOVE IN THE PRODUCT
TFT Mobile wasn't the only mobile game we announced. The bigger news was @Wildrift, aka "proper" League of Legends on mobile. That team did many things right w/ this announce, but I wanna point out one particularly powerful segment.
Wild Rift's collection system has tons of fun animations for champs and skins. There's no functional reason for them to be there—the animators just wanted to make something cool for players.
Devs poured real love into these animations, so we decided to show off a montage of em:
The basis of SHOW THE LOVE IN THE PRODUCT is: People are more likely to respect the thing you're making when it's clear YOU respect it. When you made something look good just for the sake of it looking good, there's integrity and honor in that. People dig that stuff. So show it.
STRAT 4: SURPRISE AND DELIGHT YOUR CORE AUDIENCE
The fourth and final "risky" game we announced in 2019 was @PlayRuneterra. A card game, in 2019. Like our mobile games guys, this team felt sort of terrorized by anti-card-game sentiment and memes online. You know the ones.
The way we introduced the first footage of @PlayRuneterra was wild. Instead of dropping it on its own, the first glance came at what players THOUGHT was the end of the "League 10 Year" celebration. The clip was like only a few seconds long and also revealed THREE OTHER new games:
A longer, standalone trailer would've made players say "What is it? What is–?! Oh. A card game..."
Instead, we got reactions like this: [insert gif of Tyler1 reacting to L10]
Not all of these games are exciting for every League player. But almost everyone will be excited by AT LEAST ONE of those games. By showing all four at once, the takeaway was "Riot is making something for me."
Your core audience NEEDS to know you're gonna take care of them. So when you make something that'll appeal to only one segment, consider bundling it with something that'll delight the rest. That's why we did all of these game announces alongside the League 10 year celebration.
STRAT 5: SIGNAL TRIBAL MEMBERSHIP
After hitting players with the "surprise and delight" reveal, the @PlayRuneterra team sealed the deal with a video message that nailed all four of the strategies above, along with one other big one.
Here's the key part imo: Everything here screams "I am one of you." The childhood photos are instantly humanizing, and @RiotUmbrage's list of the genres problems grabs your attention if you're a CCG player. It proves he's worth listening to, unblocking him to deliver a successful pitch for his game.
Okay, that's the thread! 🧵
I'll close out by pointing at an example of another game studio totally nailing a pitch for a game that could've been controversial.
The @pathofexile team REALLY knows how to talk to their audience and it shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_YjBTYHhug