While there is no specific restriction around brands creating games in the UK, it has become a relatively frequently used marketing tool. Rarely meeting the incredibly high production standards of official releases, and with a history of sub-standard gameplay, ‘branded games’ are viewed with some suspicion by the gaming community: a byword for poor quality produced by those trying to exploit an audience.

Christmas Shopper Simulator – an intentionally ridiculous game surfing the trend for ironic simulator games – was launched directly after Black Friday, when shopping madness was on everyone’s lips.

We seeded the game directly into the Twitch community, by having one of the site’s biggest stars, Spamfish, giving 30,000 gamers a live demo of the game. The aim was to inspire people to share their own copycat videos of them playing, to get a conversation going within the gaming community: user content driving game downloads which would in turn produce more content.

As an intentionally stupid game, there was no ‘good’ or ‘bad’. We celebrated absolutely all social comments in order to turn potential detractors into fans. The best and worst comments about the game were put straight onto review posters, and tweeted back. In the end we tweeted out a blank review poster and let people create their own.

Over 800 ‘Let’s Play’ videos were posted to youtube, gathering over 36million views: second only to the John Lewis ‘Monty the Penguin’.

Tens of thousands of tweets and comments, plus online and national press, contributed towards 89million PR impressions.

The game itself was downloaded over 980,000 times.

90% of players saw GAME as a more appealing brand, and 87% saw GAME as a “different” retail brand, crucial to achieve at Christmas time. They were also 56% more likely to recommend GAME to others, and 85% of people either visited GAME online or in-store after seeing our content online.