Originally released in 2018, Among Us has seen a meteoric rise in popularity following the outbreak of Covid-19. Innersloth, the developers behind the hit multiplayer deduction game, have enjoyed playerbase increases of over 1500% since the early days of launch - cementing Among Us as one of the breakout games of 2020-2021.
So how did Among Us get so big, and continue to grow beyond everyone’s expectations? Sure, there’s a bit of ‘right place, right time’ as you’d expect from an indie title becoming virally successful, however the key to Among Us’ sustained player retention and seemingly unending virality didn’t happen solely by chance. Innersloth launched the Among Us hypetrain to the moon by harnessing the power of community, and more crucially; memes.
The @AmongUsGame Twitter account has helped foster the Among Us community by consistently reposting and commenting on fan-made memes, artwork and other Among Us related content. Putting their fans in the spotlight has fueled community involvement and conversation surrounding not only the game itself, but also all of its fan-created content – generating a ton of social media inertia across Twitter, Twitch.tv and notably Discord. Now a common practice, Innersloth were among the first to fully utilize the potential of Discord as a tool to grow their fanbase.
Much like a tight-knit Twitter circle, Discord servers are notorious for meme generation – and Among Us’ official Discord server was no exception. This constant churn and reposting of user-generated content across multiple social channels pushed Among Us to the forefront of social media conversation, earning Innersloth a huge amount of publicity.
We were lucky enough to speak with Victoria Tran, Community Director at Innersloth, and ask her a couple of questions...
Innersloth seem to have a great approach to recognising and amplifying their community. Was this an intentional strategy and how has that been strategically managed?
Thank you! It was definitely intentional - we're continually blown away by the support we've received from our players, and are always looking for ways to recognize and spotlight them. For one, we're constantly talking in our community spaces, whether that's on our Discord, social media, or forums, to gather feedback and build relationships. Plus we love sharing their fan creations within our own community! We've worked with our merch partners and talked to fan artists to create an encouraging fan creation policy, which you can read here. Essentially the strategy is simple - to listen and put as much as we can into action.
Additionally, are there any comments or insights you would like to share on the approach to community across various channels?
I've written extensively about Among Us' strategy across channels, specifically for TikTok and Twitter. Feel free to check them out for deeper insights!
The main takeaway from Among Us’ success for video game marketers is; give your player-base a space to grow and create. Utilise community channels like Discord, get involved with players on an individual basis on Twitter and most importantly show that you care about third-party content being generated for your game. Innersloth have changed the earned-media game, and we’ll doubtless be seeing more indie game studios follow a similar social media strategy in the future.
