When I got to Certain Affinity, the world-class potential of the company was clear. After all, they played key roles in developing some of the biggest names in gaming. Halo, Call of Duty, Left 4 Dead? All huge titles, and the work that Certain Affinity did upon them was stellar. Certain Affinity didn’t have a product problem. Everyone loved their product. The problem that they had was that no one knew it was their product. In addition to the recognition problem, saying that their “brand” left a lot to be desired was a huge understatement. There were two different logos—no, not a logo and an alt, but rather two separate logos that didn’t resemble each other at all. To add to that, both logos violated almost every principle of good logo design.
In addition to that, the website was a glorified job board that didn’t showcase any of their amazing work. All of the beautiful HD video footage and screenshots from these games? Posted almost everywhere on the Internet except on certainaffinity.com.
While working as a UI designer on Crimson Alliance and Halo Waypoint, I continually lobbied about the need for a brand re-boot, then a website overhaul, and lastly a sizzle reel. When Halo 4 wrapped, I got the opportunity.
While the results are far from the best work of my career, the work done moved the company light years from what they had been doing. It wasn’t rocket surgery. Create a brand built around the white-hot passion of the game development team, overhaul the website to showcase some the the amazing work that the company had done, and then finally put the brand and work showcase in front of people.
Although Certain Affinity did have some fans, the company had no way to message or interact with them. They had no social media presence at all. But isn’t 1/7th of the world on Facebook? Yes. Yes they are.
Through contests, posting of game content, thought leadership, and good old-fashioned interaction—Certain Affinity now boasts 16,000+ likes, 4,000+ twitter followers, and 4,100+ YouTube subscribers.
All of those numbers are meaningless unless you are doing something with that community though….
The AAA-game development business has a lot of ebb and flow periods of communication. As a game gets close to release, there is a frenzy of communication about it to engage fans. However, for large blocks of time while a game is in development, all external communication about it is under embargo.
During those long communication draughts, my strategy to keep fans engaged with Certain Affinity was based around industry thought leadership (panels/speaking engagements) and social media interaction. One of the staples of our interaction has been a weekly contest designed to keep fans engaged with the company that is, “Kicking Ass and Making Games.”