When PC manufacturing behemoth Lenovo decided to enter the game development space, many people assumed the world's most prolific PC company would make a splash.
In spite of its size, however, Lenovo opted to take a more novel approach: crowdsourcing. Instead of hiring the who’s who of game developers and funding the project like all AAA games (industry jargon for games with the highest budget) Lenovo decided it was going to create a community of gamers who would essentially work with the actual development team to create the game.
With the help of Culver City-based creative agency The Woo, the company conceived a plan that would introduce Lenovo gaming to the gaming community in an honest, straightforward manner. Instead of using an audience to financially support a project, the plan called for building a community around the game’s development process, giving fans input into how it was created.
The project, titled Game State, launched in late-2015.
The plan was bold: the video gaming community is notoriously stubborn, and anything perceived as a marketing ploy could end up backfiring in a big way. Because of this, The Woo knew that Game State couldn’t be perceived as anything other than a collaborative indie game development project.
“It’s a very non-corporate way to introduce yourself; you would think that the biggest PC manufacturer in the world would attach itself to AAA titles right out of the gate.” said John Gibson, SVP Group Account Director at The Woo. “We worked with Lenovo to come up with a way that felt more grassroots. It felt more in-touch with the gaming community, and we really wanted to connect with them in a meaningful and fun way.”
While the developers at Dark Rift, the studio behind the hands-on game development, worked their way through the project, community members had “missions” to accomplish. The first mission involved input on the character concepts and weapons before moving on to indoor/outdoor environments further down the road.
By making the process collaborative, Lenovo and the Woo were, as it so happens, gamifying game development. Though the launch was met with a mixture of curiosity, skepticism and genuine excitement, the community was able to get more involved in specific aspects of the game as development progressed — and did so enthusiastically.
Once a mission was completed and all feedback was received, Lenovo would announce the results to the community in conjunction with beloved industry influencers like Felicia Day, Funhaus and Machinima.
For Gibson, finding the right influencers was crucial to the project’s success.
“We looked at a lot of different influencers,” said Gibson. “It was a long process because we didn’t want to have influencers that were just tangentially interested in the genre. We wanted them to be really passionate about the idea and be involved in it with the community.”
The influencers became a part of the community, uploading their own drawings and ideas that the developers at Dark Rift could riff off of.
After months of collaboration, the game, entitled Embers of War, was unveiled in pre-alpha at PAX East in April. A full release is expected in October.
For Gibson, the community's growth was the ultimate goal, but seeing how the community has interacted with developers at Dark Rift was especially inspiring.
"I love that Lenovo is really focused on the learning, collaborating aspect of gaming, not just gameplay itself but taking it beyond a hobby to something that really benefits people long term," said Gibson. "From a marketing aspect, that’s what I really find fascinating. Whether they were interested before or they developed interest over time, this provided community members an opportunity to get really close to game developers and to have a one-on-one conversation."
Images via Lenovo Gaming/Facebook.
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