Twitch has teamed up with Halo co-creator Alex Seropian’s Look North World to create The Glitch, a brand-customizable game world in Fortnite.
The Glitch is an integrated galaxy of brand-customized playable worlds distributed in Fortnite, and promoted by Twitch streamers. Commissioned by Twitch, the game was created by the Look North World studio of Alexander Seropian, cofounder of Bungie. It will launch on September 20 at 9a.m. Pacific, the first day of TwitchCon San Diego.
As the inaugural brand partners taking up residence in The Glitch, Domino’s and Peloton will be the first to have their own uniquely crafted in-game worlds reflecting their brand identity.
Twitch and the Look North World teams have deliberately baked in player-brand interaction at every corner; for example, players can come across a fully modeled Domino’s pizzeria. By engaging in a ‘pizza party,’ their health will be fully restored – allowing them to get back into the action and giving a powerful connection to the brand’s product.
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Andrea Garabedian, Amazon Ads head of brand partnership studio, briefed me on this in an interview. She noted that Twitch does not have its own ad sales team, but its owner Amazon sells across all the Amazon properties. The Twitch brand partnership studio is more like a sales support department with the mission of creating excellent Amazon advertising and connections with brands to live interactive and premium content experiences.
“I think of us as an internal creative agency that lives within Amazon Ads, and our goal is to create these engaging brand experiences across Twitch so that brands and streamers and viewers and their community members can get out of brands more than just video and display advertising,” Garabedian said.
Streamers, from an advertising perspective, are enthusiastic and very effective storytellers who are able to create vibrant, highly engaged communities around shared interests and because of the live and interactive nature of Twitch, compared to other places where content is pre-edited and, pre-recorded, Garabedian said.
By embedding brands into games, the parties can open up a two-way conversation with streamers and their audiences and the brands.
“They can actually engage and lean in with the community a little bit more,” Garabedian said.
One example is Maybelline, which was looking to promote mascara. To do that, Twitch partnered with streamer, who did a two-hour stream and sold out the products being advertised through a live shopping experience via a chat bot. That’s a way for the brand to connect live with the Twitch audience.
In a world where in-game advertising is viewed more positively than ads in any other form of entertainment, The Glitch is a big next step in providing aligned brands meaningful access to a coveted and enthusiastic audience.
Branded games often suffer from forced advertising elements that conflict with the actual gameplay, and Twitch wanted to ensure The Glitch was above all else a fun experience for players to engage with while still providing bespoke touchpoints and value for Domino’s, Peloton, and future brand partners.
At launch, the brands will be distributed within Fortnite, and they’re going to be promoted by Twitch streamers.
“The Glitch is going to be the next step in Twitch being able to provide aligned brands with meaningful access to a very highly coveted and enthusiastic audience,” Garabedian said. “The Glitch is really a new evolution for the world of branded games through this franchise. Brands have the opportunity to be a true part of that experience.”
There will be incentives for players to interact through gameplay with the brands while in the game, as well as the stream. It’s a team-based, 16-player Zone Wars game where players complete tasks in an unstable world in the name of restoring order. There are four teams of four each.
But every match they have will be governed by a randomly generated glitch event, and these glitch events will take them to the different moons, which are different maps. There can be different modes within each moon.
“It’s really about keeping the game fresh and rewarding, so that adaptable players are able to think quick and engage really quickly, and also want to come back,” Garabedian said.
To bring this vision to life, Seropian’s years of expertise with Halo worked to weave relevant, functional, and yet non-intrusive elements throughout the game’s worlds for brands to authentically play a part in the fun.
On top of its highly engaging core gameplay loop, The Glitch was built from the start to be easy to stream and fun to watch. It’ll be highlighted by top Twitch streamers next to promotions encouraging viewers to play, stream, and continue watching– creating a self-fulfilling feedback loop to drive an audience for the game and thus excitement for the brands within it.
Twitch’s is aiming to provide real utility as a partner for brands looking to forge meaningful connections to a majority Gen Z viewerbase–and how marketers can work with beloved streamers to convert those viewers into actively engaged brand advocates.
Domino’s and Peloton will have their own moon. Each world is a branded game. If it’s successful, more brands are expected to jump in.
“The future of this is endless. We have the Twitch community in mind and the streamers in mind when we do this because they are a huge part of what will make this successful,” Garabedian said.
Garabedian said Twitch turned to Look North World because of the team’s triple-A experience and his active focus on UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite) and user-generated content with branded experiences.
Garabedian said the team had thought about the project for a long time and were thorough in coming up with the ideas. The Glitch gameplay is clearly going to be streamed on Twitch and played by Twitch streamers for the community.
Will it work with gamers?
“There’s a little bit of leap of faith we’re asking people to make. But sometimes that leap of faith is needed in order for big ideas to come, to come alive,” Garabedian said.