On the day of 14th of December, during the last week of the year we all would be working before breaking up for Christmas, we had a Branding Workshop in London at Lock Studios, a Café with a dedicated workspace for office meetings that have been specifically booked for us for this occasion.
Before the workshop, however, we also had an opportunity to playtest the board games we are working on at the moment, a strategical board game and a family party card game. Thanks to playtesting paper prototypes in person we have gained an understanding of the underlying flaws of how the games operated at the moment and we could carry out improvements to the communication methods between players and gameplay flow. We have also brainstormed what parts of the games can be further expanded and how we would benefit the most from cutting another part entirely, this has led to certain mechanical reworks for the gameplay flow of the detective board game, which we think are a positive change.
The Branding workshop was an author’s creation by Sara Ruis Garcia. The workshop was attended by the majority of our staff, revolved around understanding and exploring our customer persona and image, as well as imagining Ludensa as a person, what kind of people they would interact with, how they would dress, how they would behave, et cetera.
“Branding is a broad discipline involving creativity and strategy. A brand is not exactly something that can be created. It is something that happens in people’s minds when all conditions are gathered. Therefore the purpose of branding is to reach people’s hearts and build a community around an idea.” – Sara says.
During this workshop, we explored the values and purposes of Ludensa Game Design company in order to find how a brand can be built out of it. First, we drew its conceptual map and personified the company. Later, through a series of games, we saw how this map can be used to generate assets for various situations. Thanks to this we have gained a better understanding of how our work should be structured and what kind of content we should be creating as to make it more streamlined and effective, as well as to not deviate too much from a certain pipeline of content while trying to explore what posts we can produce and see what gains tracking.
Some of the things we have brainstormed were also ideas for social media interactions outside of our usual content, such as seasonal posts for major calendar events such as Christmas, or small developer leaks for upcoming content. Posts like this would allow us to tease our upcoming products, creating hype and allowing us to collect ideas and small feedback from the content around the posts we make. This brainstorming has also allowed us to explore how we can go around being more inclusive with our content for all, while also focusing on our client persona and keeping the regular and steady flow of content.
Krzysztof Pastor
