Unleash the Light
Client:
Cartoon Network & Grumpyface Studios
Key Roles:
Marketing Director, Producer, Editor
Year:
2020
STEVEN UNIVERSE: Unleash the Light is the final game in an RPG trilogy that has an in-cannon narrative based on Cartoon Network IP. I worked as a Marketing Director & Producer at Grumpyface Studios where I directed the production of environmental assets, items, item copy, and re-designed components of the GDD for scope to fit Apple Arcade’s launch timeline.
The social media links to the left lead to some of the content I made for the game as Marketing Director. The video that's playing above is one I produced and edited specifically for the 1.1.0 marketing campaign.
GDD REDESIGN: There are an incredible amount of moving parts in an RPG. (Writing, voice acting, items, upgrades, currencies, NPC’s, side quests, etc). All of which need to work well together for player engagement to be maximized. Once it comes time for production, even the best GDD is put to the test. If something needs changed, it often becomes a question of which moving part could be diminished without sacrificing player engagement as a whole. During pre-production, I redesigned each part of the GDD to have a “Plan C” course of action we could take if we needed to reduce the scope of any feature. My “Plan C” designs involved reducing assets, tweaking abilities, and sometimes completely removing a feature for a more time friendly one. Having all of these options planned out in advance allowed us to take them quickly when needed, preserving our momentum, saving our time, and allowing us to pivot quickly away from features that were too costly to the budget. At the end of the project, over 50% of the game came from my “Plan C” designs.
CONTENT STRATEGY: When this game came out, Steven Universe was at the height of it's popularity. Something that is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to creating marketing engagement, as our marketing material needed to become at least as knowledgeable as the fans were at this time in order to be seen as authentic and worth engaging with. To accomplish this, I made sure all the items and item copy in the game were related to show references and fan culture. This lead to organic engagement as players discovered items that would reference previously fan-made memes like"Pearl's Rap Career."Additionally, I created the fully decipherable "gem language" in the game based off real glyphs used in the series bible and their actual translations. This lead to fans discovering they could translate parts of the game themselves to learn more about the story, show lore, and more, all which immediately generated further organic engagement.
