For Brawl Stars' 5th anniversary, Starr Park CCTV revolutionized digital storytelling for mobile games, immersing players in a dynamic Unreal Engine simulation with day-night cycles, changing weather, and over 30,000 character variations. Streaming 24/7 through 54 cameras, this rich interactive experience combined six weeks of animation, bespoke story drops, daily journals, and voicemail recordings, with hidden timecodes across social media. Attracting 89 million visits and inspiring 8,500+ fan videos with 130 million views, the campaign significantly elevated community engagement, uncovering the game's lore and pushing player numbers to a three-year high, all without media spend.

Launched in 2018, Brawl Stars quickly ascended to global fame but faced dwindling player numbers over the past three years. In the realm of free-to-play games, retaining players is as crucial as attracting new ones. The initial revelation that Brawl Stars is set in an abandoned amusement park sparked immense excitement and fan speculation. However, the subsequent lack of expansion on the game's lore led to a decline in player engagement. Recognizing this, the 5th anniversary presented an opportunity to rejuvenate the community by delving deeper into the game's backstory.

Introducing new lore into a beloved game carries significant risks, particularly the potential for backlash from a community deeply attached to their own version of the story. So the challenge was to reignite interest in a mature game without alienating its loyal fan base. The solution was Starr Park CCTV: a lore-driven interactive experience that cleverly balanced revealing the game's backstory with allowing the community to discover carefully hidden stories, and generate and share their own theories online. This approach revived curiosity and discussion among players while also involving them in the unfolding story.

Starr Park CCTV successfully reinvigorated the Brawl Stars community, demonstrating the power of storytelling in re-engaging players and propelling the game's momentum. It underscored the importance of continuously nurturing player curiosity and investment in the game's world, especially in a competitive market where player retention is paramount.

Situation:

While excitement in Brawl Stars’ lore was high in the early days of the game, interest and player numbers had waned over time.

Brief:

For the 5th anniversary of Brawl Stars, generate excitement and increase engagement within the player community by using only in-game and social channels. The project needed to build the game's lore, while inspiring fans to develop and share their theories and content on social media.

Objectives:

Generate massive excitement & engagement in the Brawl Stars community.

Reactivate lapsed players.

Traditionally, game origin stories are told through animated films known as cinematics. However, to engage the Brawl Stars community for the game's 5th anniversary, we pivoted to a much more ambitious idea: to craft an elaborate story scavenger hunt delivered directly to players in the game itself, and across social media. This multimedia approach introduced a novel way for the community to engage with the game’s lore, moving away from the traditional use of cinematics.

We developed a security room simulation within Unreal Engine, and streamed footage from the “past” to unveil major narrative elements. This setup dynamically reflected environmental changes and character reactions to unfolding events, injecting Starr Park with unprecedented detail and interactivity.

Central to our execution was the creation of over 55 hours of generative animation, including 30 minutes of bespoke animation dedicated to critical story moments. This extensive content library supported a six-week-long story scavenger hunt, offering players a continuous, evolving narrative adventure. To enhance authenticity, we implemented night and day cycles and fluctuating weather conditions, and generated more than 30,000 variations of park goers who reacted realistically to in-park events.

We also developed daily journal entries from a fictional Starr Park security guard, and several voicemails from key game characters calling into Starr Park’s emergency call center. And we changed the placement and condition of the CCTV security room every day as the campaign progressed, to mirror how Starr Park transformed from a delightful amusement park into a mayhem-filled battleground.

To further boost player engagement, we integrated time codes into Brawl Stars’ social media posts. These codes, when entered within the CCTV simulation, unlocked significant narrative segments. This feature not only added an interactive layer to the storytelling but also gave players a sense of ownership over the narrative as they discovered and shared their findings online.

This approach enabled players to collaboratively and immersively piece together the game's origin story, establishing a new standard for interactive storytelling in the gaming industry. This project showcased how exploring new narrative delivery techniques and devices can greatly enhance player experience and strengthen the connection between a game's lore and its community.