Space Marines, Hobbits & conventions!
Game releases are dropping about as much as the leaves of a tree, making for a very busy - yet rewarding - month at Black Soup. In this newsletter, we’ll take you through September’s campaigns and their highlights.
Space Marine II - Focus Entertainment
Campaign timeframe: September 4-5
After several months of preparation, September, and honestly a lot of August, was dominated by the release of Space Marine II. For good reason! Being one of the most anticipated releases of the year, it was an equally anticipated campaign from our side. To celebrate the release, we recruited 35 creators who all brought something unique to the table. From action-packed gameplay in 4 different languages, to Nerdforge creating a full-sized suit of armor (featuring Tabletop Time and Whitespace Props!). And that’s not all. Over 50 pieces of organic content were delivered. The results are nothing short of wonderful. This campaign truly required everything Black Soup has to offer for the Emperor.
Space Marine II is one of those games that requires a unique approach, and not just in terms of scope. Warhammer is an established IP with a wide range of fans that play other existing games, both physical and digital. On top of that, the game has a certain groove to it that some fans of the genre have been unable to find outside of Gears of War. We wanted to tap into fans of heavy action games as much as possible, but also remain mindful of profiles that would cover the game organically. Collaborations for the co-op mode were also a factor.
While our expectations were heightened due to the game’s hype, it still exceeded on all platforms. With nNearly all 99 pieces of content were delivered within a week of release, o. Our creators brought in a peak CCV of over 250,000 on Twitch (making it the 3rd most viewed game), and nearly 4 million views on YouTube - numbers that will truly please the Omnissiah. We were delighted to see reactionsWe’ve got to mention the reactions to the first swarms of tyranids, HandOfBlood appearing in full armor, and AlphaCast / JDR’s D&D game amongst some of our favorite moments.
Saber Interactive has made an amazing game worthy of praise, and we’re proud to have worked alongside the Focus Entertainment team to deliver a badass launch campaign with content creators. We hope that people will continue to enjoy Space Marine II content well into the future, perhaps even in the year 40,000.
Tales of the Shire: Hobbit Day - Private Division
Campaign timeframe: September 22nd (Hobbit day!)
There’s no way we’ll comfortably segue from 10-foot tall Space Marines to Hobbits, so we’ll just mention the important thing upfront: whenever Hobbits are not ignoring the fact that eagles can take them to Mordor, they’re busy drinking, eating, and building their dream home in Hobbiton. Tales of the Shire brings this experience to players, so what better way to raise awareness for this upcoming cozy life sim than doing a big marketing push on Hobbit Day?
Like the similarly titled book, the Hobbit Day campaign had everything: paid campaigns and organic outreach on all platforms, plus recruiting ambassadors and focusing on cozy game fans in addition to variety creators. Tolkien fans from Middle-Earth and our planet alike were synched up to showcase the game live on stream during TwitchCon week. That all being said, The Fellowship of the Black Soup pulled it together, with 71 pieces of sponsored content delivered in total.
Either due to the carefully balanced but focused selection of cozy and variety creators, or the magic of Hobbit-esque friendship, the campaign managed to get 621,000 views on YouTube and 7,5 million minutes watched from our selected creators on Twitch across 50 simultaneous streams with a peak viewership of 94,000. Those numbers put us in the top 7 on Twitch! We also have to mention our organic marketing team who ventured off like Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn in order to secure 32 additional streams and videos through organic outreach (of which we have to thank the exceptional enthusiasm of everyone we worked with!).
Now that we can sit back and enjoy the fruits - and Lembas bread - of our labor, we can truly appreciate the passion that flowed through this campaign from both Private Division and Wētā Workshop. More importantly, we can adapt our plan for the release campaign with the lessons we’ve learned. The challenge of adapting to the cozy genre and fitting everyone into such a tight window of time was nothing compared to casting the ring into the fire, but a fulfilling journey nonetheless. We’re looking forward to the release campaign!
Other activities
But wait! There’s more. Here’s what’s been keeping us busy this month!
Top of our list must be Frostpunk 2, one of the top 5 wishlisted games at time of release. We practically completed this from start to finish within a month of release. Despite Frostpunk’s frigid themes, the results were hot! Nearly all sponsored creators overperformed beyond our expectations, ending up at 7,3 million minutes watched from our 13 sponsored creators! Though this was partially due to the excitement that creators had for 11 bit studios’ long-awaited sequel, our careful selection would even make the New Londoners happy (though they probably have more serious problems to deal with). Highlight clip here of Day9 democratizing his Twitch chat.
September was also a big month for our long-time partner Nacon, with three campaigns: Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown, GreedFall II, and Ravenswatch. All three campaigns had their unique quirks and needs that put our organizational skills to the test, and led us to working with very different creator profiles. It was especially satisfying getting to work on the full release of Ravenswatch after supporting the game throughout its Early Access starting in April 2023. For the occasion, we came up with a set of fun challenges that streamers could try and beat during their sponsored segment.
Running all campaigns simultaneously required a massive coordination effort on our side, but it’s always a pleasure working with the Nacon team on any of their titles.
To round off our month, let’s take one more stop - Train Sim World 5! By sponsoring creators that are close to the simulation genre, but perhaps not specifically to train sims, we managed to get first-class value out of this campaign. With 1 million views on YouTube (and counting) from our creators, and excellent results on TikTok with over 1089% views versus estimated, we are very happy to have assisted with Dovetail Games’ newest entry. I’m sure we could fit in more train related puns, but it would derail this section too much.
And thus ends September. As we slowly approach the spooky season and look forward to more campaigns, big and small, we would like to wish you all a great October, and we’ll see you again on the next one.
Stay soupy!
- Black Soup’s newsletter monkeys
