Anno has one of the most loyal fanbases in strategy gaming. The kind of players who’ve been there since the beginning and count down the days to every new release. But loyalty alone doesn’t grow a game, discovery does.
So when Ubisoft asked us to launch Anno 117: Pax Romana, we didn’t just activate the existing community. We went after the people who hadn’t found it yet.
Our insight: casual players discover games late, and when they do, they love Anno. The trick is getting the algorithm to introduce them. Short-form video, driven by faces they already trust.
Together with comedian Ruud Smulders and guest gamers Rick Serpent and Don GameMeneer, we built a short content series that used Anno 117 as a jumping-off point to explore actual Roman history. Interviews with historians.
Trips to Roman sites. Gameplay woven in as a natural reference, not an ad. The content lived on Ubisoft’s own channels, with the creators as contributors. Built to be discovered. Built to convert.Around launch, the same creators went live on Twitch turning new viewers into a community, and a community into fans.
The result? over half a milion total impressions. The best-performing social series on Ubisoft’s channel. Every single expectation beaten.
Not bad for a history lesson.
We like to brag.
