Categories
Streamer Support

Legends of Runeterra Stream Overlay Kit

Being a streamer is a tough enough job, let alone trying to keep your stream looking fresh for your viewers. That’s why we are excited to share this project with you, at no charge, and hope that this kit helps you in some way to grow your online audience.

Part of our mission at Number29 is to empower online content creators like yourself. As fellow content creators, we understand what it takes, and how hard it can be to create quality content. By giving back to the communities we love, we hope that you will tell others what we are creating.

We hope that this Legends of Runeterra Stream Overlay Kit helps you either find the confidence to stream live for the first time, the motivation to put on a community event to engage your viewers or just some new elements to incorporate into your existing stream package.

Whichever it is, have fun! 👊


Now a Free Download at OverlaysPro.com

Kit Preview

Please help support this project by learning more about who we are, tweeting to us at @number29GG on Twitter, or joining our Facebook page.

The download runs close to 450Mb. As you can see from the gallery above, there is tons of stuff in there to use and manipulate, including all of the native Photoshop files.

Included:

Master .PSDs of all the overlays.

This includes:

  • Camera Overlay ( Base Template & Regional Emblems )
  • Full Overlay Kit ( Unflattened .psd format)
  • Overlay – Starting Soon
  • Overlay – Just Chatting
  • Overlay – Extra
  • Overlay – Thanks for Watching
  • Twitch Panels ( and .psd template )
  • Tons of extra assets for customizing
  • Fonts ( Friz Quadrata )
  • A Number29 promotional bug (if you were so inclined 🙌)

Enjoy!

Categories
Company update News Press Release

Strategic partnership between Number29 & Play Your Game Collective to develop Esports Camps program

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: (March 27, 2019)

Joshua Van Horsen
Number29, LLC
636-248-8361
business@num29.com

Strategic partnership between Number29 & Play Your Game Collective to develop Esports Camps program

Esports marketing & creative agency Number29 envisions the future of gaming through education and training.

Las Vegas, NV — March 27, 2018: Esports agency, Number29 announces today a strategic partnership with start-up Play Your Game Collective, operators of Esports Camp to assist in the marketing, branding and future development of the company and its programs.

As the popularity of esports continues to grow, and cement itself within mainstream culture, more and more of today’s youth envision a future as a working professional with the Esports industry. Over 250 million people worldwide consume esports as a form of entertainment. About half of them, 125 million, are avid esports watchers. According to research firm Newzoo, esports is projected to generate $1.1 billion in revenue in 2019, marking the first year the industry would reach the billion-dollar mark.

“It’s been a joy to work with the entire Number29 team. Josh is genuine in his approach to our mission and is truly passionate about esports player development. We feel very fortunate to have found such a dedicated partner,” said Justin Hoeveler, Play Your Game Collective founder.

“We see this partnership as a culmination of our experience within the Gaming, Education and Hospitality industries,” said Joshua Van Horsen, Chief Creative Officer of Number29. “We absolutely believe in the future of gaming, and the value of educational programs within the esports ecosystem. While esports have been around for over two decades, this industry is still in its infancy. We see now as a great time to begin educating players and fans on not only healthy gaming habits but on the full spectrum of opportunities present within the space.”

Number29 and Play Your Game Collective believe that by creating the programs now that provide both the educational tools, and healthy habits for fans to develop their careers within the space, we can begin to define the best practices, educational models and career advancement opportunities within the industry.

###

About Number29

Number29, headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada is a boutique Esports Marketing and Creative Agency with a global clientele. We play a critical role in helping brands entering the esports ecosystem, in navigating the many different nuances of teams, players, genres, platforms, and channels, to find the right fit for success within the space. Our love for the gaming/esports community was never a strategic business decision, but an extension of our passion and core values. We are committed to strengthening the gaming communities by connecting brands and esports organizations through authentic content, grassroots fan experiences, streamer, and influencer integrations and events.

About Play Your Game Collective

Play Your Game Collective, headquartered in San Anselmo, California operates Esports Camps, and esports developmental camp program nationwide. Play Your Game Collective believes that an interactive environment focusing on the individual, team, competition, personal growth, community, and FUN are vital to both game-skill and personal growth for aspiring gamers.

Categories
News Streamer Support

Apex Legends Valentine’s Day Cards

We are in love with Respawn’s new battle royale game, Apex Legends! With Valentine’s Day tomorrow, we thought it would be fun to create some Legends inspired cards to send to your love ones on social media!

If you haven’t already, also check out our Apex Legends 5k Desktop wallpapers. All you favorite Legends are represented and free to download.

Enjoy!

Categories
Wallpapers

Apex Legends 5k Wallpapers

The recent surprise launch of Apex Legends has taken the battleroyale community by storm. Amassing over 10 Million players, and 1 million concurrents, in under 3 days is impressive in of itself, add to that, that Apex Legends has sat at the top of Twitch since launch with 300k+ viewers for the past 5 days, and it’s easy to see this game has some lasting power.

Here at Number29, we’re no less susceptible to the hype, and have been grinding whenever we have a minute to spare. This game has captured our imaginations unlike any battleroyale before it, and we are loving every minute of it.

So to show appreciation to this amazing game, we thought it would be great to share some 5k wallpapers to grace your PCs during those limited moments when you are either sleeping, or having to reboot before starting up Apex Legends again.

Enjoy! Let us know what you think of the designs in the comments! Happy Fraggin’

Click to Download

Categories
News Wallpapers

Call of Duty – Black Ops 4 – Free Wallpaper

Click to Download the Call of Duty - Black Ops 4 Wallpaper by Number29
Click to Download the Call of Duty – Black Ops 4 Wallpaper by Number29

With the announced release of Call of Duty – Black Ops 4 by Treyarch being October 12, 2018, we’re starting to get excited by the potential of a new iteration of Black Ops in the age of Battle Royale games such as Player Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG), and the immensely popular Fortnite.

E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), begins next week, June 12th, 2018 in Los Angeles, and Treyarch has stated that Black Ops 4 will be playable on the show floor.

Of course, at Number29 we are very interested in the esports potential, and what the multiplayer experience may offer. Here is the preview trailer:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooyjaVdt-jA

 

On top of that, Treyarch has announced that there will be an included Battle Royale mode, called Blackout. Other than a massive map, land, air and ground vehicles, and playable classes, there isn’t a lot known about Blackout. Here is the preview trailer:

 

Tell us what you’re looking forward to in the new Call of Duty – Black Ops 4!

Categories
Company update

Number29 Update Video with CCO, Joshua Van Horsen

Joshua Van Horsen, Number29’s Chief Creative Officer updates you on the first 10 days since the public relaunch. Learn about current and future plans for the coming months.

 

Categories
Streamer Support

Fortnite Tournament Kit for Streamers

Fortnite – Tournament Kit for Streamers by Number29

Thank you for your interest in the Number29 — Fortnite Tournament Kit for Streamers.

We are excited to share this project with you, at no charge, and hope that this kit helps you in some way to grow your audience.

Part of our mission at Number29 is to empower online content creators like your self. We are content creators through and through, and we understand what it takes, and how hard it can be to create quality content.

We hope that this Fortnite Tournament Kit helps you either find the confidence to stream live for the first time, put on a community event to engage your viewers, the motivation to create your own overlays and stream designs, or just some new elements to incorporate into your existing stream.

It’s yours, so enjoy it. 👊

Kit Preview

Please help support this project by Learning More About Us, tweeting to us at @number29GG on Twitter, or joining our Facebook page.

Here is the link you’ve been looking for:

The download runs close to 400Mb. As you can see from the slideshow above, there is tons of stuff in there to use and manipulate.

Included:

Master .PSD of all the overlays. (Yeah, its just one .psd. Everything is in there, sorted and arranged. if you have any questions, hit up the comments below.)

This includes:

  • Stats – Player Profile
  • Stats – Duo Profile
  • Stats – Squad Profile
  • Streamer Name Plate
  • Streamer Camera
  • Informational plate for tourney rules, schedule, etc.
  • Lower Third for Casters, or Hosts
  • Replay Frame
  • A Number29 promotional bug (if you were so inclined 🙌)

1  – Fortnite Animated Transition (Both .mov with Alpha, or .png sequence and .mp3 file)

4 – Static Backgrounds that are precomposed to work well with the overlays.

Notes: The .psd utilizes the following fonts (neither of which are included – sorry):
Burbank Big Condensed Bold – You can buy Burbank online, or replace it with Luckiest Guy, which is close, but a bit wider.
Roboto – This font is available as part of an adobe creative cloud subscription. I expect you can buy it too, but probably easier to just replace it.

Enjoy!

Categories
Press Release

Number29 Drops Into The Esports Agency Arena

Number 29 — Esports Branding and Marketing Agency

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: (May 16, 2018)

Joshua Van Horsen
Number29
314-714-5431
business@num29.com

Number29 Drops Into The Esports Agency Arena

Mobile esports veteran Number29 is geared up for the future of entertainment.

St. Louis, MO — May 16, 2018: Branding and marketing agency, Number29 relaunches today with a renewed focus on esports and the gaming community. This repositioning by Number29 places them squarely in the center of the burgeoning esports industry, as one of the few grassroots agencies built by gamers for gamers. With over 20 years brand & marketing experience with clients such as Super Evil Mega Corp, Disney, and National Geographic, plus a lifetime of gaming, Number29 aims to be the premier esports brand and marketing agency.

“We’re very excited about shifting our focus too exclusively esports related projects and partnerships,” said Joshua Van Horsen, Chief Creative Officer of Number29. “ We are leveraging decades of brand and marketing expertise, and real-world experience within the esports community, to elevate organizations to create the best esports content in the most artistic and passionate industry; gaming.

Our mission at Number29 is to empower online content creators, esports teams and organizations, game developers and publishers with world-class event design, marketing, branding, and content strategy services. Our love for the gaming/esports community is not a strategic business decision, but an extension of our core values. Being such, we are committed to providing educational tools, streamer assets, and content, and insights into our own processes to help strengthen the businesses of our fellow gamers.

About Number29: We are a global esports branding and marketing agency built on a mission to support gaming communities, help streamers and esports organizations brand themselves and to encourage growth within the communities of the games we love. We do this through excellent design, focused strategy and a commitment to the next generation of gamers.

###

About Number29

Sometimes being late to the party can offer you surprising opportunities and that’s exactly how Number29 found its focus.
In 2015, after years of pushing an Art Director career into upper management, Joshua Van Horsen fell in love with twitch.tv culture, and competitive mobile gaming. With a background of playing competitively at LANs in the late 90’s/ early 00’s, Josh had been a long time fan of esports. The prospect of mobile gaming creating that same social experience for a new generation of gamers inspired Josh to leave his cushy day job and actively become involved in the fledgling mobile esports community with his company Number29, and a Vainglory focused website, Vainshame.com. Three years later, and more than 20 live esports events around the world, Number29 has helped pioneer mobile esports and the future of gaming.

Today, Number29’s focus remains the same: to support gaming communities, help streamers and esports organizations brand themselves and to encourage growth within the communities of the games we love. We do this through excellent design, focused strategy and a commitment to the next generation of gamers.

Categories
GTM marketing Series Strategy

Esports Marketing :: GTM Strategy — Communication

This article is the third in a series ( Part 1 | Part 2 ) focused on esports marketing and go-to-market strategies. Throughout the month I will be looking at each of the pillars discussed in Part 1 and breaking those down into smaller discussions to help you identify what approach is right for your organization.


The second strategy pillar we will discuss in an esports team GTM strategy is focused on Communication.

The decisions you made regarding your Team Strategy in part 2 should be informing the choices you will be making in terms of which marketing channels you should be leveraging for your Communication Strategy.

What is a Marketing Channel?

Marketing channels are the platforms you will utilize to get your word out to your fans. Social media is your most important marketing channel, which can be divided into each platform you will utilize to reach your target demographics. Other channels to consider are podcasts, video, ads, live-streaming, events, influencers etc.

Considering your Team Strategy

Looking back at your Team Strategy from Part 2, we considered some of the following questions:

* Who is your target audience?

* What is the team storyline?

* How are you going to gain market visibility and steal mindshare from your competitors?

* What promotions can you offer fans to make your team worth investing in both emotionally and financially?

For the sake of your Communication strategy, I want to dig into the target audience and make sure we have a clear understanding of why knowing who these fans are is important.

Your target audience is going to be a very important consideration when looking at what marketing channels you will be leveraging for your communication strategy.

* Is there a particular region you want to target?

* Is your target market on PC, Console, or Mobile or all three?

* Is your audience predominantly male, or should you be targeting females as well?

* What’s the target age of your demographic? Typically you would be looking at 14–35 years old, however, mobile games can bring in gamers upwards of 56 years of age. Is that important to your communications?

The answers to these questions should be considered to determine which channels are going to provide the best bang for your buck to start with. While I would typically recommend leveraging as many channels as possible, knowing which channels will allow you to reach the demographic you are targeting will allow you to refine your communications.

Location can be incredibly critical in terms of how you reach your fans if you plan to represent a region, or will be creating geolocated ads. If you are targeting prospective fans outside of the US, be sure to understand what platforms are available to those users. In China, you will want to leverage WeChat and Weibo.cn as much as possible for your community building efforts. For Southeast Asia, look at Facebook as the default platform of choice.

As an example, let’s consider the Overwatch team, Shanghai Dragons. As the only Overwatch franchised team in China, their communications strategy must incorporate WeChat, Weibo, and Tencent QQ because those are the digital platforms where their regional fans are living. Just a quick check reveals:

Weibo: ~60k followers
Twitter: ~54k followers
Facebook: ~3k followers

Approximately sixty thousand Chinese fans on Weibo. I was unable to pull the stats for WeChat, but I’d venture to guess that’s even higher due to WeChat’s full penetration of China’s economic & social infrastructure. So, if you’re like me, you may be wondering how Shanghai Dragons Twitter can still have approx. fifty-four thousand followers, if what I am saying is true?

My initial hunch was that these are mainly fans of the US and Europe that are just following every Overwatch League teams. I referred to Zoomph.com to check the regional breakdown for the Shanghai Dragon’s twitter account:

As you can see here, the majority of fans on twitter are definitely based in the US, with small percentages spread through the rest of the world, with China representing the 12–18 percentile of followers.

Target devices — PC, Console, or Mobile? Knowing where the majority of your fans are coming from not only allows you to understand how they are playing, but can also dictate how and where you want to be promoting, how that content is going to be consumed, and what sort of sponsors and promotions will appeal to your market.

PC gamers are at home with multitasking and have desktop browsers at their fingertips, whereas mobile gamers are using their devices to watch streams and consume content. Console gamers are most likely utilizing a combination of mobile devices and PC due to few consoles offering a pleasant browser experience, other than watching twitch when they are not playing.

Female gamers are becoming increasingly more prevalent and engaged in esports culture. I would recommend being very considerate in how you are communicating and understand that the female gamer is not only out there, but is a growing audience. While I haven’t seen many female audiences exceed 15% for most teams and competitive games, that is still a sizable chunk of your fan base.

As a point of comparison, we can look at @ClashofClans, which actually is an outlier with a female fanbase of 19%. With a total twitter following of 4.3 million, that is still a female audience of ~817k fans. That is a huge female audience! Don’t neglect these fans.

Target age is sort of a tricky factor. Knowing your audience is one thing, but knowing who you want as your audience is something else altogether.

I actually thought this was something that the H1Z1 Pro League did pretty well this last weekend. Their pregame content (and to some extent the casting as well), was targeted to potential viewers that were not your typical gamer. Being broadcast on Facebook, they knew that they had potential to bring both an older audience and a larger than usual female viewership. They did a great job not only explaining the game and the battle royale genre, but also bringing in mainstream celebrities to speak to the strengths of gaming and esports. This communication strategy is aimed at bringing a wider demographic into the viewership, and not just catering to core gamers.

Now that we have a better understanding of our target market, our decisions on platforms and communications can be more easily defined.

Twitter: Strong in North America and Europe. Great for news and direct one on one engagement with fans.

Facebook: Top Social Network in Southeast Asia. Large female demographic, with ages ranging from 18–56 years.

Youtube: Team video content is a must. Building fans through storytelling, and engaging content. Tell human stories, not just gameplay vids.

Twitch: a great channel for player based fan building from 14–36 years old. I do believe there is a lot of opportunities for teams to build brand specific channels, and leverage the Premier and Replay features to create more intimate viewing parties for brand engagement. Take your fans behind the scenes of your videos and have players sharing their experiences real-time with viewers. Engage one-on-one with your fans in real-time and give them something few teams are doing today.

Or consider doing “behind-the-scenes” streams from your team house, while your players are practicing. Fans want this content!

Mitigating Sub-channel Overlap & Fan Confusion

One aspect of your communication strategy that I think is really worth considering for organizations with three or more teams, is sub-channel segmentation.

What I mean by this is breaking up your team communications into individual channels based on the game. For instance, having separate Twitter accounts for your Organization, your Overwatch team, your Super Smash team, and your Clash Royale team.

I don’t think this is the right approach for all channels, but Twitter, in particular, can benefit from a more segmented approach to communication. One of my own biggest pain-points as a fan is following an Org because I like their Vainglory team, but then having to wade through all their other communications, trying to pick out which ones are relevant to me. Is this a CSGO post, or LoL, Clash Royale, Rocket League, etc?

Organizations want to show large numbers of followers, to help provide value to potential sponsors and developers when being considered for partnerships. I get that. However, I’d argue that being able to show 100k followers, divided amongst 4 twitter profiles, segmented by genre is almost more valuable to a potential sponsor/affiliate.

These are now highly targeted accounts that have a very clear demographic. Your Clash Royale team twitter of 35k followers is a mobile audience. They are younger, more interested in products that make their brand of gaming easier, and typically more social and are not constrained to gaming at home. You can now approach Anker about a potential sponsorship. You can show that you have 100k total followers, but 35% of those followers are targeted mobile gamers. You can send communications directly to that market segment without paying for ads. These means that you can almost guarantee increased engagement, with a higher sales conversion, with the right communications.

I would still recommend a brand account as well. This still allows for cross-genre communications. Now your team twitter accounts can provide more of the play-by-play type tweets, with scores and matchups, and your organization twitter can provide more of the high-level promotional tweets. Save the dates, games times, sponsor messages, promotions, etc.

So, is a mixed channel approach right for your organization?

Marketing is hard. It’s easy for me to say, hey, break up your organizational comms into five Twitter accounts, and keep them all up to date, in addition to your Facebook account and your Youtube channel.

The reality of that situation for most esports organizations is that they don’t have the resources or people to keep up with that pace of content. Team owners don’t really have the time to keep all that straight. Using volunteers has its own challenges. Not to mention creating graphics, animated gifs, and videos for all of these channels, with their different aspect ratios and limitations. And by the way, Twitch is requiring your players to stream 20 hours a week in order for you to get paid.

It can be very overwhelming.

If you are a new organization, sometimes it feels like you have to start with a minimum of a Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, Twitch, Discord, Linkedin, and Telegram accounts. Not to mention building a website. But why? If you don’t have the resources to properly leverage those platforms to engage your fan base, then don’t.

Start small.

You’ve worked on your Team Strategy, and you are confident that a Twitter account is the right place to start for your target audience. Start building your fan base, and formulating your communications. Engage your fans with tweets and promotions. Find ways to leverage your limited resources to execute your communication strategy.

You have a team video you want to tweet out? Now create a youtube channel, and post it there. You don’t have to have a clear youtube strategy in place yet, just use it to house your content. Over time your fans will come, and when you are ready you can create consistent content for that channel.

As your fan base widens, and your management team grows, continue to add channels to your strategy. Revised your communication strategy, and expand your organizational footprint.

What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.