VGPR #010: I Love To See It
My interview with Spawn On Me’s Kahlief Adams, awards season is upon us, social media strats from Fall Guys, and more
[Hi, I'm Lizzie Killian, founder at FIFTYcc PR. You're reading VGPR, a newsletter featuring interesting developments and topics impacting public relations in the video games industry. If you’re enjoying this newsletter, please consider subscribing or sharing with a friend or colleague. Send feedback, questions, and ideas to vgpr.insider@gmail.com, or drop me a note on Twitter.]
Can’t believe we’ve been doing this for ten weeks now!
In this issue: My interview with Spawn On Me’s Kahlief Adams, awards season is upon us, social media strats from Fall Guys, and more
It’s an Honor Just to be Nominated
Awards season is here. So many awards!
Fan favorite The Game Awards returns this year on December 10. Voting for nominees is already underway for the Golden Joystick Awards, and the newly announced *gameHERs Awards is accepting nominations until October 15, with the ceremony on November 19.
The Tribeca Film Festival has also opened submissions for games to join its 2021 festival. They will select the inaugural Tribeca Games Award, honoring games that “demonstrate artistic excellence in storytelling.” The early deadline to submit is October 30, 2020, which you can do here.
But why should you participate? What can awards do for you? You know, other than the satisfaction of winning a prize, bragging rights, and looking good on a shelf. While not every great game will win something, I think of an award as the PR equivalent of a *super* positive review, or feature placement in a top outlet. Even award nominees often get advance coverage, and actually winning increases visibility, credibility, and prestige not just during the award shows themselves, but through coverage of the show in multiple outlets. If you're fortunate enough to win awards across multiple shows, they can create a consistent awareness cadence and send a very clear message to press and influencers that this is a game that deserves their attention, making life a lot easier when you push for launch coverage.
My Interview with Spawn On Me’s Kahlief Adams
Kahlief Adams is the creator and host of gaming podcast Spawn On Me. He recently hosted and produced the Black in Gaming Awards this year and won the Excellence in Media Award. In my interview with Kahlief, he talks about Spawn On Me’s audience, media access for creators of color, and the PR value of pitching to podcasts.
Check out the full interview here.
The Social PR Strats Behind Fall Guys
The end goal of any PR campaign is of course to create awareness that helps your client connect with their audience. Traditional PR worked “top down”: pitch a smaller number of outlets, and hopefully they share it out to their larger audience. Social media accomplishes similar ends but by working “bottom up" and taking the message straight to the audience.
Great campaigns can combine both of these approaches, and Fall Guys community manager Oliver Hindle breaks down a solid list of best practices in the social space that took them from 40,000 to 1.5 million Twitter followers and 280,000 Discord members. Beyond good advice for social, there's some worthwhile notes that I think apply to about outward-facing communication in general (e.g. “make sure your posts have obvious value”). Check it out here.
The VGPR Discord
Prior to starting the VGPR newsletter, I've maintained a small online group of PR professionals since 2016. We started on Facebook but have lived on Discord for the last 18 months. It's a chill group of understanding PR pros, and has been a great place to ask questions, get advice, make an introduction, or just to commiserate about the challenges of the PR life.
In order to keep the conversations focused, the Discord is currently open to active PR professionals only. I’m blessed that this newsletter has a larger audience than would be healthy to add into our Discord all at once, but for any full-time PR people interested in joining the conversation, you can sign up to join the Discord here. Your information will not be shared with anyone (ever!), and I’ll be adding new people slowly over the next few weeks.
In the Media
Welcome to WIRED Games
Wargamer is relaunching
Unfortunately layoffs have hit Digital Trends
Caty McCarthy leaves USgamer
Chris Pereira is now Senior Editor and Global Head of News at GameSpot
And as a treat for VGPR subscribers: the organizers of Game Devs of Color Expo offered to let me share the full recording of the panel “How to Pitch your Game to Press” with you before it’s posted elsewhere. Thanks y’all!
And now you know VICE’s Gita Jackson loves city builders.
PR Jobs
2K - PR Communications Manager, Americas - NBA 2K (Novato, CA)
Blizzard Entertainment - Senior Public Relations Manager - Diablo (Irvine, CA)
Facebook - Digital Marketing Manager, Gaming (Los Angeles, CA)
Jam City - Director, Public Relations (Culver City, CA)
Niantic - VP, Communications (San Francisco, CA)
PUBG - Director of Public Relations (San Ramon, CA)
Riot Games - Communications Associate Intern (Los Angeles, CA)
Riot Games - Manager, Communications - World Wide Publishing (Los Angeles, CA)
Zynga - Senior External Communications Manager (San Francisco, CA)
Looking for more jobs? Check out older issues here.
Is this…for now?
(h/t to Javy for this one)