There is not any scarcity of success tales surrounding Baldur’s Gate 3, and Larian Studios artistic content material supervisor Ben Maltz-Jones added to the stack in a Recreation Builders Convention session titled “Roll Play: The Technique Behind Baldur’s Gate 3 on TikTok.”
Since taking on the official Larian Studios TikTok channel in September of 2022, Maltz-Jones has grown the account from 591 followers to greater than 280,000, with a cumulative complete of 4.7 million likes unfold throughout greater than 100 TikToks uploaded to the website.
Maltz-Jones stated it additionally helped prolong the demographics to which Larian was focusing on its advertising and marketing, as its TikTok viewership skews extra feminine and “fairly a bit youthful” than its followers on different social media platforms.
“This would not have been potential with out Larian management giving me a ridiculous quantity of freedom to attempt to fail,” Maltz-Jones stated, “and I do not suppose it will have been almost as profitable in the event that they hadn’t allowed me the room to experiment.”
When he first began working the TikTok account, Maltz-Hones stated he was the solely full-time social media individual on the workers, “so it was necessary to have the ability to do quite a lot of stuff with out continuous help to not burden everyone else.”
He in a short time needed to discover ways to seize and edit footage from builds of the recreation so he may conceive of an execute on concepts himself. Fortuitously, he stated Larian had wonderful debug/UI instruments for that, letting him disguise the recreation’s interface and freely transfer the digital camera round the recreation as wanted to seize the pictures he wanted.
“The earlier you possibly can be taught to seize issues your self and never have to clarify why it is necessary that you just make a personality look precisely like Shrek after which kick any person else off a cliff, the higher, actually,” he defined.
Anybody can run a TikTok, Maltz-Jones stated. The secret is just figuring out how one can play to the platform’s power and understanding its weaknesses.
To know these two qualities, he advised studying up on the platform and utilizing it often, following significantly massive influencers as a result of that can enable you to perceive issues like which viral sounds are at the moment common, or what options and adjustments are being made to TikTok extra usually.
And whereas some sounds and celeb clips could also be common on the website, he suggested warning about utilizing them as there are legally grey areas round firms utilizing such content material with out permission to advertise their very own merchandise.
“Be sure that your authorized staff is conscious of how TikTok works and that they perceive the platform,” Maltz-Jones stated. “Be ready to clarify how viral sounds work and the way Tiktok encourages the use of them.”
He additionally confused that content material revealed by way of TikTok does not should be as polished as different types of promotional content material. To emphasise the level, he performed a five-second TikTok video of a Druid character casting the Create Water spell and triggering a downpour alongside a music clip saying, “Properly, I suppose I’ll just piss on the ground (piss on the ground, piss on the ground).”
The clip has almost a million views as of this writing and was the most profitable posts on the Larian account for about eight months.
“The footage you seize does not should be polished as long as it serves the objective of the platform,” he stated. “TikToks may be tough and prepared; it isn’t like skilled trailers.”
In brief, the thought is to run your organization TikTok as if it had been a fan account.
“Do not get caught up in the particulars of the recreation you are selling,” Maltz-Jones stated. “I’ve seen unbiased builders flip to TikTok to submit actually polished gameplay clips with just huge quantities of textual content above and under, they usually virtually at all times fall flat.
“Consider your TikTok account as, ‘What if a fan made this? What would they discover humorous? What could be an sudden selection?’ It is about that fashion of authenticity that actually helps us shine on the platform. As a result of in a way, our course of is to have much less of a course of.”
“Consider your TikTok account as, ‘What if a fan made this? What would they discover humorous?'”
If the advertising and marketing for a large AAA studio takes itself too critically, it won’t click on with the tone of the platform. A recreation like Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands can do very well on TikTok due to its much less severe tone, however there are methods to make profitable TikTok movies much more somber items. He advised healthful video games channels on the platform to get an thought as to how different varieties of video games may be pitched effectively.
“Curate your personal model voice for the platform,” he stated. “The easiest way to try this is constant posting utilizing your personal tone and humor.”
As for a way constant, whereas TikTok would possibly advocate posting three or 4 instances every week, Maltz-Jones stated he began with one submit every week and solely ramped as much as two shortly earlier than the recreation’s launch.
Past that, Maltz-Jones was considerably skeptical of cross-posting content material from different social media platforms on TikTok, saying “bespoke” content material created with the platform in thoughts will are likely to do higher. However for those who do wish to re-use content material, he advised re-editing it for TikTok at the least by placing blurred tops and bottoms on any horizontal movies, and by no means telling the consumer to show their cellphone as a result of folks will just skip the clip as a substitute of doing that.
On hashtags, he advised having just one hashtag particular to your recreation, with 4 or so different, extra common (however nonetheless related) hashtags included to verify a video will get proven to a wider viewers.
Lastly, he additionally talked about TikTok’s algorithm being geolocked, saying {that a} consultant with the firm advised utilizing a VPN to make it appear the firm was posting from America, as that might assist it unfold additional.
“You may have TikTok play into your technique and showcase points of the recreation, however ensure to do it in TikTok’s means,” Maltz-Jones concluded. “Plan how you are going to strategy it, have enjoyable making the content material, however finally embrace it.”