well as a business. He also displayed an early aptitude for PR: “I was an annoying kid who would call up Ocean Software every week asking for release dates.”
“I was an annoying kid who would call up Ocean Software every week asking for release
dates.” Rana Rahman,
Raptor PR founder and CEO
TECH ON ME After studying PR in the mid 90s, Rahman quickly found work in healthcare communications, hoping that a first rung on the PR ladder might eventually lead into games. There were some brushes with games PR - working briefly for EA on its pre-ECTS show (European Computer Trade Show) at the turn of the millennium, then in 2006 leading frontline media relations efforts ahead of the PlayStation 3 retail launch (which bagged him an agency award) - but it wasn’t until 2016 that Rahman finally crossed the rubicon into games industry PR, when he started working with an agency that boasted AppLovin, TappX, Rovio Entertainment, Jam City, Gram Games, and Kuato Games among its clients. It was during efforts to launch AppLovin into UK
and European markets that Rahman levelled up his B2B comms credentials for games, tech and adtech sufficiently to ensure that Raptor would one day find the niche it now occupies. “Fast forward to early 2020,” cuts in Rahman, “and
basically I was out of work. It was the pandemic and I was viewed as an expensive contractor. I couldn’t claim furlough because I had a limited company, as a freelancer, so I basically looked at the market and what I could do next.” With his hard won experience in mobile and B2B,
and with emergent tech finding a new foothold on the periphery of gaming, Rahman quickly saw a PR gap that a new agency could fill. “I teamed up with ex-colleague, Thomas Huxter, and we won our first full agency retainer account in January 2021.”
DRIVE TO INFINITY That first client, in-game advertising platform Admix (now known as LandVault), has since been joined by
more than 20 others, including Xsolla, Sandsoft Games, Bidstack, The Tiny Digital Factory, Dubit, and Kinetix Not exactly household names in your typical gamer abode, admittedly, but in the realm of B2B together they represent a healthy mix of disruptive and established tech businesses. “Yeah, we’ve doubled down on our niche,” beams a happy Rahman. “When we started we were B2B for games, media and emergent tech brands. But in early 2022, we evolved our positioning to B2B comms for games industry, web3 gaming, media and metaverse brands.” Given the dearth of consumer outlets and the relative
paucity of B2B ones, breaking through on either front presents different challenges. “B2B comms is quite predictable, it is relatively straightforward for us,” says Rahman. “B2C is a whole different kettle of fish. When we did the launch announcement for Infinite Drive [a mobile racer with some web3 tech from The Tiny Digital Factory], we didn’t send it to any tier-one consumer outlets. But we did break it via [GamesBeat’s] Dean Takahashi and it went viral. We got ten to fifteen interviews for its CEO.” Even the mighty IGN published a positive piece on the web3 racer.
BE KICK-ASS One swallow does not a summer make, of course, and the team at Raptor is under no illusion that web3 games remain a significant challenge, for the agency and for the industry more widely. Like many industry observers, Rahman believes that for web3 games to become part of the mainstream, they have to be good. Regardless of the underlying tech, the principles of solid game design and execution are universal. However, just because there aren’t many web3 games garnering mainstream attention, that’s not to say the situation won’t change over the next 12-18 months. “From a consumer perspective, there’s very little for gamers to play right now - that’s absolutely true,” reports Rahman. “But there are some good brands out there. Some good companies headed up by established game makers.” Rahman isn’t the first to draw parallels with free-to-play gaming, which has taken years to become accepted, in the process of which F2P gaming has arguably become the biggest driver of revenue in the industry. Until web3 gaming reaches the same critical
Merve Liebelt, Senior Strategic Advisor, Raptor PR
Rana Rahman and Mark O’Leary
December 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 47
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