Blog #03. Creating a gaming brand for non-gamers.

In 2022, we were approached by Live Tech Games to support their team in creating a consumer brand under which their portfolio of mobile games would sit.

Live Tech Games, as the name suggests, specialise in live mobile tournament games with no limit on the number of participants. The fast and fun nature of their games opens the door to a diverse audience and, most importantly, to those who may have never even downloaded a mobile game from their app store before.

Following successful fundraising rounds and with ambitious plans for growth, Live Tech Games needed to create a brand that was vibrant, energetic and a little less gamer.

The below details the journey that we took the team on, as we eventually crafted pogl, the free to play, mass participation mobile game.

Analysis and Inspiration

What are our competitors doing?

We paid close attention to what others in the mobile gaming space were doing well, how they were communicating with their players and their use of a distinct Tone of Voice to do this. It was also important to analyse their visual branding and the design features they had utilised, cross referencing this with the demographic of users they then attracted.

What are our inspiration doing?

Across all of our clients, we advise against taking inspiration from competitors, running the risk of creating a copycat brand and copycat company. Instead we looked at brands outside of LTG’s sector, that have a wider appeal.

We dug deep into the emotions conveyed in their communications, then we analysed their visual appearance and how this built upon those emotions.

Defining a Brand Essence

A Brand Essence summarises the brand in as few words as possible, often for internal use and to inspire the building of the brand both visually and verbally.

For Live Tech Games, the challenge here was bottling up the emotion and feelings that we wanted players to experience when playing their games, using their app and interacting with their brand online, all into a short sentence.

Through workshops and a good amount of paper on the flipchart, we crafted a brand essence that spoke to our audience and the impact that we were aiming to have on people of all demographics.

‘Thrilling moments that you can’t wait to talk about’

Doesn’t sound very ‘gamer’ like, does it?

This captured the essence of what Live Tech Games were trying to create. It captured how they wanted their team to feel when developing games and how they wanted players to feel when playing them.

We made it clear from the outset that Live Tech Games were creating a brand that was centred upon socialising, enjoyment, connection and ultimately the sharing of moments together.

The brand essence would inform the visual design of the brand, the Tone of Voice, messaging guidance and customer and client communications.

Adding Colour & Design

Having agreed on the brand name ‘pogl’, an extension of the emotion, feeling and liveliness that we saw as essential to the new brand, we worked closely with LTG’s in-house artists to create the brand visually.

We used simple colour theory and shape language to craft a logo that captivated the audience, using hot pinks and reds to reinforce the ‘live’ nature of pogl games. This was complemented with the softer pinks and oranges associated with warmth, family and friendship.

The shape language flowed from the logo into our accompanying creative, using curved edges and overlapping layers to build personality across a range of stylised assets.

An array of secondary colours were later added to the Brand Guidelines to add vibrancy, whilst providing the game developers with a varied family of colours to work with.

Crafting a Tone of Voice

pogl’s Tone of Voice centred around socialising and participation in their games, positioning pogl the brand as a player of the game too.

We play pogl games and love them in the same way that all other players do too. We’re pogl the player, not pogl the game or pogl the platform.

In all communications, it’s vital that pogl avoids ownership of their games and instead shares in the excitement that they wish for their players to have when playing them. Using colloquial language helps pogl to stay friendly, always alongside their players and never against them.

As a result, they stay cool, relatable and laid back. There is no emergency associated with pogl, it’s fun and games for everyone.

Detailed Application and Execution

Bringing Brand Guidelines to life, across digital channels, an app, product or service and even within a team, is never easy.

As a team, we spent significant time ensuring that we were fully equipped to deliver pogl the game, using the guidelines that we’d set.

We’ve continued brand focused check-ins with Live Tech Games throughout the game’s growth. Whether it’s for UI development or for the production of marketing campaigns and materials, we’ve ensured that their Brand Guidelines are used as a rulebook to maximise consistency in everything they do.

The investment in the pogl brand at the very start of its journey has enabled Live Tech Games to go from strength to strength, growing pogl to thousands of players nationwide. Our time together in workshops and brainstorms ensured that the branding process was near seamless and through our ongoing work together, we’ve continued detailed and high quality brand application across all of their growing channels.