Forged in the crucible: How creators crafted millions of views for Albion Online
RESULTS
1.7m+ hours watched on Twitch
1m+ views on YouTube
500+ content piece submissions
600k+ organic hours watched
300k+ Creator Program hours watched
Company overview
Sandbox Interactive, a Berlin studio founded in 2012, has always believed that the best games are the ones you make your own. For the German-based team, it’s all about giving players the freedom to shape worlds and interact with each other. Albion Online is the result of that vision, a sandbox MMO that puts fun and player experience above everything else. In 2020, the developer was acquired by the Swedish company Stillfront Group.
Game overview
Albion Online drops players into a medieval fantasy sandbox where the community shapes just about everything. Items, weapons and buildings are crafted by players, fueling a world that runs on trade, combat and creativity. Thanks to its “you are what you wear” system, characters aren’t locked into classes. An archer can swap gear and step into battle as a mage, or shift from warrior to healer. This flexibility has become one of Albion Online’s defining characteristics. Sandbox’s debut game launched on PC in 2017 and on mobile platforms in 2021, making it the first truly cross-platform MMO.
Products used
Paid Campaigns, Paid Quests, Key Campaign, Managed Service, Creator Program
The Challenge:
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to live in a medieval sandbox, Albion Online is the closest you can get without hopping into a time machine. Launched in 2017 by the Berlin-based Sandbox Interactive, this is an MMORPG that emphasizes freedom over traditional, rigid classes. A player’s stats are determined by their gear, a system the devs call “you are what you wear”.
In Albion, pretty much everything you use, whether it’s a sword, a pickaxe, or even a cozy little house, is crafted by players. Then it all gets traded in marketplaces that feel like a medieval stock market. Prices go up, prices go down and the whole thing runs on good old-fashioned supply and demand, just like the real world.
This player freedom and creativity explain why the game has built such a loyal, die-hard community over the years. But MMOs never sleep. The community’s thirst for content must be sated. New players have to be brought in. How do you approach these challenges? Through regular updates, content drops and, in this case, special events.
The Crucible saw 100+ creators compete over four weeks
Enter the Crucible. An online contest devised by the Sandbox crew that would bring together creators from all over the world to face off against each other. Coinciding with the arrival of season 28, this month-long competition would see creators lead brand new guilds and compete for some top prizes, including an incredible, life-sized, steel version of one of Albion’s top-tier swords.
Take a look at the video below by the brilliant Man at Arms to see the craftsmanship that went into forging the Galatine Pair.
But what’s a creator event without creators? Boring, that’s what. And a big event demands big personalities. So, the Sandbox team turned to their favorite creator marketing platform: Lurkit.
The Solution:
If you want a global, weeks-long creator event to work, the trick’s pretty simple: recruit the right creators and make sure they’ve got what they need. The Crucible was an excellent idea; the Sandbox team just needed a hand pulling together a mix of creators to turn it into a success. Thankfully, our team is well-versed in doing just that.
We looked to Paid Campaigns and Quests to form the backbone of the project. Campaigns brought in creators from outside the Lurkit platform. Meanwhile, Quests activated those already onboarded with us.
The secret sauce behind any successful creator marketing campaign is fit rather than raw numbers. You need creators who understand and have an interest in the game they’ll be playing — those who will commit and pour their energies into it. For this project, we naturally looked to those who had a history with Albion, but the competitive nature of the Crucible meant we could spread our net wider. And so we recruited creators with backgrounds in both MMOs and ARPGs.
Here’s how the campaign broke down:
104 creators were activated in total. 48 via Paid Campaigns and 56 via Quests.
Each creator committed to at least 16 hours of streaming. This was structured as eight streams, each lasting two hours. But here’s something worth noting. Almost all of the creators who signed up went above and beyond, streaming far beyond their contracted hours.
This was an event with a genuinely international flavor — Spain, France, the UK, China, Germany, Poland, Portugal and more. Creators from all over the world signed up to compete for a chance to win the coveted Galatine Pair.
The Results
1.7m
hours watched on Twitch via Paid Campaigns and Quests
1m
EMV views on YouTube
600k
organic hours watched
300k
hours watched via Creator Program
104
paid creators activated
500+
content pieces submitted
We’re delighted to report that the Crucible was a magnificent success for Sandbox. On paper, every creator was supposed to hit a minimum of 16 hours of streaming. That was the deal. But when creators are having fun, they don’t stop at the bare minimum. They keep going. And that’s precisely what happened here.
By the end of the campaign, creators had generated a staggering 1.7 million hours watched on Twitch. On top of that, YouTube added a further 1 million views thanks to multistreams and creators repurposing their streams on Google’s platform.
The real story here, though, was earned airtime. That’s the bonus content creators streamed after fulfilling their contracted hours. It’s kind of like overtime, but way more valuable, because it shows the event was sticky enough that creators wanted to keep playing.
Top Creator Performances
Top creator peformances by earned hours watched
NorgannonHH
Earned hours watched: 164k
Earned airtime: 245 hours
Peak CCV: 1.1k
Zizaran
Earned hours watched: 98k
Earned airtime: 92 hours
Peak CCV: 2.8k
Revenant
Earned hours watched: 50k
Earned airtime: 14 hours
Peak CCV: 5.2k
Take NorgannonHH. Contracted for 16 hours, he ended up streaming 261 hours. That’s 245 hours of bonus airtime, translating into a jaw-dropping 163,905 earned hours watched.
Or Zizaran, the Belfast-based creator. He streamed 108 hours total, with 92 of those being “extra,” pulling in nearly 98,000 earned hours watched on top of his contracted output.
Then you’ve got revenant and metashi12, both delivering monster numbers. Revenant streamed 30 hours (almost double what was asked), racking up over 50,000 earned hours watched. Metashi12? Similar story. 10 extra hours, nearly 45,000 earned hours watched.
Top Creator Performances
Top creator performances by total hours watched
NorgannonHH
Hours watched: 175k
Airtime: 261 hours
Average CCV: 669
Quin69
Hours watched: 122k
Airtime: 21 hours
Average CCV: 5.9k
Knekro
Hours Watched: 120k
Airtime: 20 hours
Average CCV: 6k
And we can’t forget names like:
Quin69 – delivered 27,786 earned hours watched on top of 122,000 total.
knekro – added 23,587 bonus hours watched.
Uzra – streamed 32.5 extra hours for nearly 30,000 bonus hours watched.
Zerator – tacked on over 11,900 bonus hours watched.
Creators of all sizes were sticking around in-game, sharing their enthusiasm with their audiences. And this was reflected in the CCV figures:
Quin69 hit a peak CCV of over 11,000 viewers.
knekro wasn’t far behind, topping out just over 11,000 as well.
metashi12 kept more than 4,000 people hooked on average, spiking above 6,500.
Even creators with smaller audiences punched way above their weight thanks to consistency and marathon sessions.
All of this stacked up into a campaign that over-delivered in the best way. Thanks to earned airtime, the Albion ended up with hundreds of hours of extra content and hundreds of thousands of bonus hours watched.
Before we leave you, you’re probably wondering, “Who won the Crucible?”. That honor (along with a big sword) went to Zizaran and his guild, Road to Exile. Congratulations to him, his guildmates and everyone who took part in Sandbox’s contest.
If you’re looking for creators for your next game’s marketing campaign, you’ve come to the right place. Drop us a line and find out how we can help you.
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