What is one of the best ways
to promote your business? Enlist the help of a famous person. Celebrity
endorsements go back decades. Remember the cereal, Wheaties? They are famous
for using celebrities to promote their product. Online games are starting to
use the same formula to promote their new releases. There is a slight
difference, though. They are using a modern form of celebrity. Professional
gamers, and/or gamers who have a large online following, are the newest
endorsers for online gaming.
Who is Ninja?
Ninja, given name Tyler
Blevins, is the world’s most heavily followed online computer gamer. He is
famous for his epic hair color changes, and top tier gaming skills. Ninja, in
his late 20’s, is followed by more than 13 million people on Twitch.
The iconic online
personality started his career in 2009 by professionally playing Halo 3. After
playing for several online organizations, he became a streamer in 2011. Blevins
continued to build his career by playing Fortnite: Battle Royale. His
popularity grew in tandem with the popularity of the game. In less than a year,
his following grew from 500,000 to more than 2 million.
Throughout his career, Ninja
has won numerous online gaming awards. For example, in both 2018 and 2019, he
won the Live Gamer category at the Streamy Awards. In 2019 Ninja also won the
Twitch Streamer of the Year category at the Shorty Awards. Though Ninja did not
win, he was nominated for the 2020 Favorite Gamer at the Kids Choice
Awards.
Evidently, Ninja is a
well-liked and influential personality in the online gaming world. It is no
wonder that Electronic Arts enlisted his help to promote their new,
free-to-play Apex Legends.
Did He Receive $1 Million to
Promote Apex Legends?
Reportedly, Electronic Arts
did, in fact, pay Ninja $1 million dollars to promote its new game Apex
Legends. He was one of several professional gamers to be asked to take part in
the big launch day for the game.
EA competes with other
online games such as Fortnite. Since Fortnite is wildly popular, EA needed to
come up with a way to differentiate themselves and create hype around Apex
Legends. It seems as though this marketing strategy paid off big time. In less
than 30 days, Apex Legends garnered over 50 million players. 10 million of
those players signed up within the first three days.
With the backing of Ninja,
Apex Legends was almost guaranteed to do well. No professional worth their salt
would endorse a game that is destined to fail.
Final Remarks
Interestingly, Ninja’s
payday was seen as big news. It is likely due to the fact that he gained most
of his followers by playing Fortnite, which is created by Electronic Arts’
competitor Epic Games. Online gaming is an extremely competitive world where
each game maker must find a way to make themselves bigger and better than their
competition. Enlisting the help of a loved computer gamer is one-way Electronic
Arts showed how it is changing the game.
