gold
VML Seattle
While many first person-shooter (FPS) games simulate war, not many gamers follow the actual Rules of War set 70 years ago.
We created Play by the Rules, a campaign challenging gamers to play FPS by the real Rules of War. We worked with top gamers (collective 1M+ following) from the most popular FPS games: Pub G, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Escape from Tarkov & Rainbow 6: Siege.
Our gamers tested their skills and played by the rules in a livestream on Twitch, hosted by an ICRC expert. In the livestream, we also debuted a custom Fortnite mode, with the Rules of War built into the flow of the game.
In FPS, players act as soldiers but play without rules or consequences. A large portion of these gamers actually become soldiers. Over 50% of newly enlisted soldiers play video games.
As players watch, share, and talk about gameplay in real time, across the world: 66% chat to friends on game devices, 41% share gameplay images/videos, and 45% watch livestreams on Twitch.
To tap into this community, we partnered with gamers from the top FPS games, challenging them to Play by the Rules and rally their robust followings to do the same.
To reach and educate younger audiences, ICRC collaborated with 5 top FPS gamers, averaging 750K+ followers, on the top FPS titles to host 5 Twitch livestreams to explain and demonstrate the rules of war.
What are rules without results?
In those 5 livestreams, ICRC garnered over 143,000+ unique viewers in just 5 hours, grew the ICRC’s Twitch following by 157%, increased microsite engagement from 72 visitors on livestream day to over 8,400 in the days that followed, and through paid media campaigns, received over 3 million impressions.
As a campaign for the International Red Cross, it was important that our gamers—and the FPS games we showed—reflected an international community. Our gamers hailed from the US, UK, Canada, and Latvia, and the developer HQ for our games spanned a similarly broad geographic footprint. This range ensured our efforts felt truly non-partisan and apolitical. Our approach also helped us speak to the importance of following Rules of War, no matter which conflict was waging, or where in the world our audience tuned in.
n/a
No
