Move aside Seraphine: VTuber Neeko is Riot’s next influencer project
Riot GamesRiot wants you to feel like you’re at the festival in Teamfight Tactics’ latest set Remix Rumble. And so what better way to promote it than a backstage tour with K/DA Superfan Neeko? There are a few complications with that, but VTubing made it all possible.
It’s yet another clip on Neeko So Fabulous’ TikTok channel. Self-proclaimed as the “biggest K/DA superfan ever,” she’s super excited as the K-pop music group reforms to star in Teamfight Tactics for the first time in Remix Rumble.
She gets out her penlight, dusts off her techwear fit, and gets going to the concert. And being an influencer, she brings her fans along with her, showing all the greatest hits. In Teamfight Tactics’ terms, that means all the new units, traits, and set mechanics for the game’s tenth expansion.
It truly is a who’s who of League of Legends music in this set. True Damage, Pentakill and Heartsteel all feature as major traits — headline acts, you may say. Then there’s plenty of smaller subgroups put together, from duo GLITT3RB0MB (Lulu and Ziggs) to solo artist ILLBEATS (Illaoi).
And Neeko’s video went viral. It racked up 250,000 views on YouTube before the set launched, and 14,000 likes on Twitter. Fans couldn’t get enough of Neeko’s cute design, or fellow superfan Lillia, and there was art abound (Kennen and Gnar were promoted later on). People weren’t just talking about the set, but how Riot pulled the promotion together: with a VTuber model and an authentic voice.
Statistically, it was one of TFT’s most successful set launches in history. It blew out the expectations of even Jonathan Santoro, the Creative Director on the autobattler’s marketing team.
“With our theme of a music festival for our tenth set, Remix Rumble, being so relatable to a real world setting, our strategic intention was to be as naturally human as possible,” he told Dexerto.
“Doing this organically, while maintaining the unexpected otherworldliness players would also expect from a music festival taking place in the Convergence, was the real needle to thread.”
The intentional design really breathed life into Teamfight Tactics. Obviously the Foodfight Tactics meme might die hard, but Remix Rumble does bring some casual chaotic fun of the days of old — at least thematically, given its gameplay is quite involved.
Riot had spent a year designing the thematic, and about the same length figuring out how to promote it. Six months before launch, they decided on the VTuber angle with the lovable Neeko.
Original voice actor Fiora Paulita recorded the lines exclusively for the set release. But it wasn’t her who piloted the rig, instead it was a member of the animation team who perfectly lip-synced it.
Paulita’s energy, Neeko’s base design, and the perfect piloting made it fit the purpose.
“Neeko felt the most endearing and fun to work with of the new Superfan characters, so then it was just a matter of asking: How would a K-Pop-loving teenage chameleon girl express her excitement for a music festival? Well, she’d make a bunch of TikToks from her bedroom, of course,” Santoro continued.
“But Set Introductions tend to be pretty long videos, and having that much dialogue from a fully animated character for that long would most certainly be out of scope.
“So it was actually having the experience of building a VTuber rig for Twitch via ‘Sewer Tour’ [a promotional video for Wild Rift] that gave the team the confidence they could execute a six-minute video of an animated character with that much lip sync.”
With that fact, neither VTubers nor virtual influencer marketing is new for Riot.
And if you cast your mind back a little further, you can probably remember the launch of Seraphine. The underground songstress turned fully-fledged pop star shared a human connection with players via her social media, which gained more than 300,000 Twitter followers.
That was a months-long campaign culminating with the champion’s launch, a new EP for K/DA where Seraphine featured, and the star “taking a break and exploring something new.”
There are some similarities in the campaign for TFT, but they’re very different approaches for very different goals, Riot says.
“The goals for Seraphine were very different and, frankly, much larger than those for K/DA Superfan Neeko,” Santoro said. “Seraphine’s launch introduced players to an all new music artist from Riot Games Music, as well as an all new champion to League, so Seraphine’s goals were far more long-term than the limited-time expectations for K/DA Superfan Neeko.”
But that doesn’t mean Neeko was truly inferior: “It allowed us to be a bit more experimental, as the stakes were far lower, and much less serious.
“The VTuber format was and still is rapidly growing in popularity amongst the same groups of people K/DA Superfan Neeko would find herself in (gaming and music loving teens). Being able to animate her with the body puppeteering of a human would only make it feel that much more… well, human!”
Riot GamesRiot engaged the services of VTubing’s most well-known artist guild, Iron Vertex, to bring the vision to life.
There wasn’t a hitch at all in the process. Iron Vertex “immediately understood what we were trying to achieve and how to help us do it,” and that was backed up by the guild’s CEO Brian Tsui.
“Personally, part of my interest in taking the job was because I wanted to see the reaction of a few of my VTuber ‘kids’ like Scarra and Vienna when they found out about it,” he told Dexerto.
Tsui, admittedly, isn’t a League of Legends player — although other members of Iron Vertex are.
“I heard of Neeko but I didn’t know her a whole lot,” he continued. “I had to do some research to learn her personality and vibe, as that would be reflected in the model. The art spoke to me, which also helped guide me to do my part.
“Our CTO Canain has been playing ARAMs, he was definitely more pogged out than I was when he got the news. Janyhero who helped out in the project was also excited. Their reaction made me realize how huge this really was to both Riot and the VTuber community.”
VTubers can be seen everywhere online playing Riot’s titles. Valorant is an incredibly popular game in the virtual creator community, casually and competitively. Hololive stars VTubers Kobo Kanaeru, Hakos Baelz, and La+ Darknesss will be part of the Riot Games ONE festivities in Japan on December 2 and 3. The FPS title is the centerpiece of the festival.
For League of Legends, the aforementioned Vienna, previously under Cloud9, is probably one of the biggest creators playing the MOBA.
And in TFT, VTubers have featured in major community events. Boxbox’s bootcamp, which the DSG creator has run at the start of the last few sets, has included big names like Shoto, and smaller creators like Sansin and Phoenixx.
Internally in Riot there are a fair few VTuber fans too, and that makes projects like K/DA Superfan Neeko a match made in heaven.
“There’s more than just one big VTuber fan here, and it’s no secret,” Santoro laughed. “VTuber rigs are an incredibly fun medium to work in, as well as a very production-efficient one.”
The value of VTubers as mascots and as influencers to invest in is a rising trend in the space. Iron Vertex has worked on projects for other game developers like Odyssey Interactive. Their website lists further clients like clothing brand Omocat, streaming service Crunchyroll, and even airline Airasia.
Sure, the giants behind League of Legends are another kettle of fish, but that goes to show there is a bright future for the virtual world in marketing.
“My read is that a lot of brands are just waiting to see one or two more success stories to make the decision,” Tsui stated. “At this rate, 2024 is going to be an exciting year.”
As for Neeko, the exclusive K/DA Superfan skin will be available for all of Remix Rumble. The fate of Neeko’s VTuber model is unclear, with Riot being tight-lipped on that.
But with the success of the charming chameleon’s video, you can be sure VTubers will feature in more Riot products soon enough.
“The post where we first shared it is one of the highest-engaged singular posts we’ve ever seen on TFT, and the engagement around the reveals of Remix Rumble overall is signaling the highest anticipation for new content that we’ve seen since launch,” Santoro concluded.
“Player reactions really speak for themselves, and we’re truly humbled by the massive engagement, positivity, fan art, and general excitement for everything we’ve put out in this campaign so far.”