Timeline
6 weeks
Unfiltered Studios
6 weeks
Remake an independent game studio brand to effectively communicate their past as baristas and their future as both game designers and community leaders. Build them a responsive website that provides them with a platform to advertise their games, connect with their audience, and build a community based around collaboration.
Unfiltered is an independent and user-collaborative video game software developer co-founded by a group of twenty-something baristas who have a passion for games that excel in storytelling and design. They are changing the face of the indie game industry by demonstrating that brilliant work can be effectively created and distributed with minimal resources. Their goal is to use their video game projects to take collaboration to a whole new level by involving our site members in the creation process.
Unfiltered: Let's Make Games Together
→ Acquisition: We want to increase traffic to the site by 10% every month.
→ Engagement: We would like to steadily decrease the bounce rate by 5% every month and acquire 5 new members per day.
→ Retention/Conversion Metrics: We are looking to gain 10 social shares per day and 5 daily newsletter sign-ups
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Unfiltered offers multi-platform video games for both entertainment and education and the opportunity to become a part of the game design process as a member of our community.
"We are trying to build an ever-growing community for enhanced collaboration and brand recognition that will help us organically promote our products once we launch them."
Unfiltered Studios is in the entertainment industry, so what’s a website promoting entertainment without including some entertaining content? This content will include gaming videos and articles such as tutorials, humorous gameplay episodes, fail compilations, tips/tricks, etc. Users should be able to find information about specs, game descriptions, reviews, how-to’s, etc. on the site or connect with the team through a contact form.
The first impression of visitors should be to find the site exciting, fun, and user friendly, causing them to explore deeper into who Unfiltered is and what they are working on.
"We want our users to view us as a diamond in the rough – a company that defies corporate culture without sacrificing credibility or relevance by using organic methods to promote our products, creating quality products out of minimal resources, and involving our community in the game development process."
Unfiltered's best customers are young adults and influential educators who are looking for positive change. They are tired of defaulting to products and ideas that come from monopolies and are looking for a fresh take on entertainment and education.
Gender: Male/Female
Age: 18-35
Profession/Industry: educators, gamers, technology, designers, software developers
Personality: Curious | Competitive | Visionary | Creative | Analytical
Our top competitors are Indie Collaborative Games, Nerdeo+, Arcane Studios, Bandai Namco Entertainment, and Bethesda Game Studios.
While other indie game developers work in a fully internal design/development process, the Unfiltered workflow involves the community in a highly collaborative and engaging way. While some collaboration websites for indie games do exist, none of them are operating actual game studios. This online platform should be like a creative enhancement juice that runs through the studio’s veins, fusing the concept of virtual collaboration and indie game studios in a way that has never been seen before. The difference is that Unfiltered has more direction than just a social platform; the studio ultimately develops the bulk of the designs and initiates project concepts into action.
Not only is Unfiltered launching as a small team, but they are also committed to keeping away from selling out so that they will never lose creative control. This is important to their users because it ensures that they will always get a say in what they produce. It also reinforces their brand identity of “Let's Make Games Together” and “Games for You, By You,” Unfiltered’s working taglines that describe their commitment to customer engagement in their work.
We gave Unfiltered a new logo that told the story of their origin as baristas by illustrating the silhouette of a gamer using latte foam inside of a coffee mug. Additionally, we transitioned their brand colors from harsh, vibrant tones to soft, neutral browns and blues.
The website design was initially built with a series of wireframes and mockups for mobile, tablet, and desktop versions. Then we coded it from scratch using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for unlimited customizations and rapid-quick performance.
If you were one of your potential site visitors, why would you visit your site?
"To discover more information on game collaboration, participate in the online gaming community, watch tutorials, follow an interesting article, contact customer service, or reach out for more information on our virtual reality education opportunities. I would also want to read game descriptions, specs and reviews and find hardware requirements and available game platforms."
What would you like your visitors to gain from visiting your site?
"To learn who we are, what we offer, why they should care, how to get involved, when we plan to launch certain products, what differentiates our brand from others, how they can contact us, and that they can trust us. We also want them to feel at home in a community of like-minded gamers."
The homepage was given a hero banner that cycles through product images, text explaining who Unfiltered is and what they offer, as well as featured promotions and featured blog posts. There is also be a Player of the Month section with an image, stats, gamer tag, and quote about their favorite game. Towards the bottom of the page, there are embedded interactable social media feeds. The contact page offers a way for users to reach about demos, quotes, job applications, business inquiries, and general help questions.
The Explore page presents an expandable gallery of photos grouped by game concept (listed separately as product once released) with gameplay descriptions, and once they become available: specs, reviews, hardware requirements, and available game platforms listed underneath. Prices, once a concept becomes a product, will be out in the open and easy to see. The Collaborate subsection provides an area for users to contribute game content ideas, such as storyline, character development, gameplay, level design, and UI.
Highlight reel with animated "glitch" style bumper, cuts and transitions, time warping, descriptive lower thirds & plug overlays.
Once the show was broadcasted live, post-production was applied in After Effects. This included an animated "glitch" style bumper, cuts and transitions, time warping, descriptive lower thirds, plug overlays, and audio adjustments.
By expanding from the traditional game studio role of...well...developing video games, Unfiltered created a memorable name for themselves in the eyes of their users and their competitors. They created a space designed around welcoming their target audience, video game enthusiasts, into the heart of the action like never before.
Join our community today to become a key contributor in the development of our games!
