MEME COMPLICATIONS When making a TikTok, you’ll doubtless be tempted to play into the app’s unique meme culture. But this can be rife with problems, particularly when it comes to audio. It’s common practice to play other people’s audio over TikToks, a practice that can potentially fall foul of copyright law if you aren’t careful. How careful do users need to be when marketing their games? “That is an extremely tricky question but
we are still working on finding an answer for it,” says Reisenegger. “We often work with tiny teams that just want to break out of their bubble and currently the worst case is that a sound gets taken down retrospectively, making the post a bit useless in your backlog. As of now, that is a small risk to take but things might change in the future or might be different for bigger games. We also worked on multiple accounts that only used their in-game music which is a totally viable strategy and eliminates the whole music licence risk.” That all assumes you’re producing your own
TikToks, however. If you’re working together with a TikTok influencer, things can get more complicated. Now, dealing with influencers is often a different skill set to dealing with press (who are all handsome and sophisticated, of course). This is potentially even more the case with TikTok – as, although the demographics are broader than stereotypes suggest, TikTok influencers often tend to be younger and less experienced than on other platforms. “We’ve been working with TikTok influencers
for over two years now, and there’s certainly been a massive shift in that time,” says Widsomska. “TikTok creators are still often very young and inexperienced, they may struggle with accurately quoting for their work, some of them may be scared to sign a contract. But, in the past year, we found that TikTokers are thankfully getting a bit more savvy. “Still, the nature of the platform means that
you can quite literally find overnight success, so there’s a constant influx of new popular creators,
most of them completely new to working with brands. It’s vital to ensure you’re compensating them for their work fairly, as some creators may quote far below what their content and influence are actually worth. TikTok is certainly worth exploring in your content creator marketing strategy, but be prepared – your experience working with TikTok creators may not be as smooth as working with YouTubers or streamers of comparable size (who all have agents, too).” “A lot of TikTok influencers right now in the
gaming world are former or current YouTubers or streamers and a lot of native TikTokers also seem to branch out onto other platforms,” adds Reisenegger. “Overall we treat them quite similar to other influencers I think. In terms of younger users, we do adapt content a bit – use easier to read language and tone, don’t reference an in-joke from a 90s TV show, etc. “We also see a lot of content doing well that
gives a look behind the curtain of how games are made. Here we try to really make them easy to digest and not require too much prior game dev knowledge. For example, on Twitter, we would maybe make a post of what is special about a hitbox in a video game that is being made, whereas on TikTok we would probably first explain what a hitbox is in general and how it works in the game.” However you decide to approach TikTok, it’s
obvious that the enormous potential of the app will continue into 2022. And while many might be behind the game, your gaming rivals are bound to catch up sooner or later. “TikTok is easy to understand but hard to
master, and while I think many brands in the gaming industry are beginning to experiment with it, few have mastered it,” says Widomska. “TikTok still seems to be more popular among indies than the bigger players, who are probably all busy right now strategizing how to best approach it in 2022. Its potential still remains largely untapped, but as interest in TikTok is growing, I expect we’ll see more brands take the plunge very soon.”
“The nature of the platform means that you can quite literally find overnight success, so there’s a constant influx of new popular creators.”
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