Happy April Fools! I just found and rated 10 Gaming April Fools jokes so you don’t have to. But you totally can because some of these are absolutely amazing.
10- Minecraft poison potato- it’s cute, doesn’t make me want to log on. Could have done way more with this campaign. Very much obviously an April fools joke. I do wonder how many people will try to eat the poison potato after the patch update speel.
9- Call of Duty- weird game modes. This marketing could prove amazing and get an uptick on players today/ tomorrow. But after people have their fun, they will drop off again. Good campaign for engagement, bad for retention.
8- Resident Evil 1 VR remake ‘leak’- it makes people wonder if the VR game will come out before re9 and feels like it’s not an April fools joke. This is great for retention on their platforms, people are craving new Resident Evil, so they will now be checking in frequently. Good strategy, not the best execution though.
7- LoL Pokémon mini game. It’s not really Pokémon, but it’s is catching all the little creatures. Since this is such a high intensity game, people not realizing this is an April Fools joke are more than likely to jump on and play. There will be a spike of users and, if Riot plays their cards right with further strategy, they might stay or at least play one of the recent LoL story games that have been released.
6- Fortnite- saying you’re getting rid of a new character is risky. While increasing engagement rate with the people who don’t realize what today is and are confused. I can see an uptick of people wanting to play it before it goes away, but once it stays… you could see disastrous user loss. This one feels like it could potentially cause trust issues between audience and the brand.
5- Valorant- this is all around a great way for existing users to just have fun. It definitely hit its TA and the people who have it downloaded but never played. (Could even hit the re-downloads a little) because everyone loves random customization. Overall good.
4- World of Warcraft- totally not leaked and real patch update. This one has the same issues as Fortnite. It could cause some old users to play, because the patch looks absolutely amazing. And WoW has been known to keep things from past April fools in the past. (As well as a ton of Easter eggs.) however, their last several expacs have seen a drop in retention, so will this help to bring back the ‘silly’ part of the game that casual users love or will it isolate their very serious gamers demographic?
———— top 3 were so hard to do————
3- Dead by Daylight- step on me. They really know their demographics. This is telling me they pay attention to the people who play their game and are playing into it with them. The amount of times I’ve heard ‘step on me daddy’ in a DBD lobby is outstanding. This not only will have high retention rate after it goes away, it shows the audience that they’re being listened to, in a weird way 🤣
2- Cyberpunk2077- this is just gold. It’s obvious it’s for April fools unlike some of the above, but hits what I’ve been talking about for the past week, nostalgia is in. I think if they really sold these as a gimmick or gave them away, they could attract a ton of new users.
1- Pokémon Sleep- they know we are all tired, also, a lot of their audience loves the sleepy little Pokémon like Snorlax (he’s not little but whatever.) it was also a really well made campaign, kudos to that. While it may not drive a ton of immediate sales, it will keep people on their page. Which in the long run WILL drive some sales if not just engagement.
Shout out to Yacht Club and Shovel Knight skincare routine. That is just an amazing April fools as it’s just so far away from what their brand is and makes a ton of people chuckle. You’ve now shown up in a lot of spaces where your sub-audience hangs out, you’ll probably see some upticks soon!
Another funny contender was Corsair’s pet products post. As a cat owner, getting them little gaming chairs so they stop tearing up my would be amazing.
I’m not the biggest fan of April Fools because so often we don’t know what’s real, so I treat them all as if they’re fake until told otherwise. I love companies like Blizzard who actually wind up incorporating some in.
But honestly, is April Fools worth trust issues with your company or does the average user just need a little more of a laugh?
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