Shiam Muhith

This brief challenges the awareness of gamers and seeks to understand the negative impact that product keys for indie games sold on grey market websites can have on both the developer and the game.

My approach with this project was to create an informative campaign that both raises awareness and provokes thought. After exploring various literary and visual metaphors, I decided to portray my message in the same format as a product key. Using digital/retro visual style and a mix of letters and numbers to create a connection between my solution and the problem. As well as a brand for the campaign to be identified with.

The strategy behind my campaign’s message ‘don’t bite the bait’ is to simply tell gamers not to buy these keys for indie games from grey market websites and provide a reason which informs and provokes the viewer to take a further look into this themselves. Colour also plays a big part within both the brand and the campaign. Using red, green and blue which are colours closely associated with gaming, I have created a key system for this campaign. Red represents the risk of buying keys, green represents the financial impact key sales can have on games and developers and blue represents how developers can safeguard their games which can have an impact on the gamer.

My biggest challenge with this project was homing in on my campaigns message and how I could visualise what a digital product key looked like. Although the campaign was always about raising awareness with the hopes of preventing indie key sales, there were inconsistencies. After taking a step back and looking at the foundation of my campaign, I was able to keep my message consistent as well as create the visuals to match which I am very pleased with.