New England Institute of Technology Discord Server for RIDigi
Introduction: Rhode Island Digital Games Institute (RIDigi), hosted by New England Institute of Technology, is a community of creative digital strategists, game developers, entrepreneurs, industry professionals, and nationally recognized thought leaders committed to training highly qualified digital talent, creating new jobs, and improving the lives of people in Rhode Island through games and the science of gaming.
The goal of this case was to boost enrollment onto the RI DIGI discord server. By targeting gamers, creative types engineering types, and business interests with content, a small team devised a plan of action to entice more traffic to the RIDIGI discord. https://ridigi.org/
Strategy to attract the gaming community to RIDigi
Initial Strategy:
The process began with a meeting with the director of RI Digi William Collis and co-founder of OXG, New England’s largest esports pro team. Collis is a great proponent of E-Sports which looks to have a bright future as gaming is morphing more and more into a competitive sport. The need for designers, engineers, and coders along with the educational infrastructure is a must for this business opportunity. The question was how to create awareness and promote the types of interactions among students and faculty to generate “buzz”. The first was to establish our growth goals. As this was a test bed, our goals were modest and the outreach was limited to only a few social media outlets.
With this initial guidance, we began to set out a target demographic with which we would construct our campaign. Owing to this being a gaming community and that the interest is getting people into all aspects of discussion about gaming, game play, game construction and the industry, a wide net was set up to b cast to attract followers.
From here we established an idea of the wants and desires of this persona.
·Looking to advance a career in VGD in an area where there are limited opportunities
·Looking for a common grounded platform to communicate with other people that have similar interests and aspirations.
·In search of possible partners to collaborate with on projects.
·Meeting place to receive information for all events/shows that involve VGD.
·Community that can help, review, and critique possible work in a more controlled environment
·Connect with other like-minded individuals in the local area interests.
The next step was to create awareness of RIDIG
This would include physical posters as well as web-based outreach. The thinking is that students and faculty could be informed about the existence of the RIDigi discord through a large funnel that included real-world spaces they would interact with outside of social media.
The RIDigi discord would undergo some changes to simplify the structure. By permitting a more limited format, the hope is to make it more accessible to new users. Expanding later to add categories is possible, but initial ease of navigation was the priority. There would be only three basic categories of interaction: General Chat, Work/Support and Events. This would encompass the interaction of discord users, the promotion of jobs and education in gaming and e-sports and also the advertising of events and interests.
Generating interest.
Our first hurdle was to figure out how to get the presence of the RIDigi server to the public. Not only content would need to be generated, but a means of directing traffic from other social media outlets. A system of content and action was developed for distribution.
A Map was constructed to form a timeline and a variety of formats where content could be placed to drive traffic online to RIDigi.
CONTENT
Content is key to catching attention and creating interest. One content piece was an update to the RIDigi logo which would indicate its gaming intent.
Several Ideas were ruminated on that hinted at Rhode Islands Anchor motif as well as a game controller. The lettering is meant to reflect a typical collegiate “Letter Jacket” idea.
The Chosen Logo
Our team created this initial material for distribution on campus for our physical poster. More enticement was added in the form of a giveaway. These were distributed around campus to generate interest in joining the discord server.
Sample posts were generated for the three base categories of content needed for the Discord server, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The ads would reflect the different intent of these formats.
YouTube art was generated to demonstrate a consistent graphic message. The purpose of The RIDigi channel was to be a repository of video links with useful information on gaming and information about the gaming industry. http://www.youtube.com
