Paradox Interactive - Stellaris
I’ve always had a knack for explaining complex concepts in simple terms, and for a game as complex as Stellaris - that was vital.
Stats
6
Influencer Marketing Projects
11
high-quality Beginner Tutorials
1,500,000+
viewers Reached
Influencer Marketing & Production
The team at Paradox was launching Stellaris: Aquatics, and contracted me to produce their latest influencer marketing event: a semi-scripted 16-hour, 18-influencer livestream to take place over the course of two days. I was tasked with writing a loose narrative for players to roleplay within, casting and coordinating communication with influencers including The Spiffing Brit and BurkeBlack, directing the livestream, and later cutting over 40 hours of improvisational roleplay into a 60-minute, 4-part episodic series for the Paradox Grand Strategy YouTube channel.
The project was equal parts challenging and rewarding - requiring coordinating a team of over 10 people to make it all possible. The story needed to be loose enough to allow streamers to improvise within it for 16 hours, and narrow enough that it highlighted the Aquatics expansion’s new features. At the end of day one, players had already dramatically altered the expected storyline, and so I wrote a new one overnight and worked with the Paradox team to lightly alter the save data to adjust empire borders and prevent the breakdown of the building narrative.
Behind the scenes during the event, I was monitoring 8 simultaneous streams while on comms with Paradox’s technical team in Stockholm, Sweden, directing cameras and coordinating player cameos for Paradox’s own Twitch stream.
Honestly, the event turned out amazingly. Each of the creators were gung-ho in adopting their roles - most in full cosplay to represent their alien species. We estimate that over 50,000 viewers tuned in to watch across Twitch and YouTube.
tutorial design
In my work as a tech consultant, I often created trainings for adults to learn to use complicated new technologies, but I never thought that would come in handy in the world of video games until now.
Stellaris is a complicated game with complex, interwoven systems, and a notably sparse in-game tutorial. Seeing an opportunity to apply my experience in adult education, I designed one of Stellaris’ most successful tutorial video series that has introduced tens of thousands of new players to the game.
The comments and analytics on the videos speak for themselves.
