Every year for April Fools, brands try to make something ridiculous to prank their audience and increase engagement. These efforts can really be hit or miss, with so many brands trying to do the same thing at the same time. That’s why I often try to do joke announcements or fake product reveals when our fans least expect them.

But if you are going to jump on the April Fools bandwagon and try to make something people will talk about and enjoy, then you need to tap into the zeitgeist of your audience.

I think we did a stellar job of that with the Game Launcher Launcher, in 2019, when more PC gaming companies than ever were trying to compete with Steam and make a competitive game launcher and app store. The average gamer would need to have upwards of five different game launchers to play the top five games being played at the moment.

Production

The video was written by me with help from Bijan Mousavi, and animated by Tim Fangon and Lewis Gerschwitz, staring Tracie Hearne on camera. As was the case for most social videos, I lead the project and provided artistic direction, while also helping with graphic design, camera work, editing and publishing. Together, we made this in the timespan of about a month (while doing our day to day tasks as well) using a budget of only $200.

Reception

We debut the video at a panel at PAX East with Pedro from the PCMR Community, then posted to all platforms that same day. Instantly it was a huge success, earning over 584,000 views, and over 2.6 million impressions across platforms.

That’s not counting the widespread impressions earned from being featured on Kotaku, PCGamer, and Gamespot.

However my favorite fact about this project, was it being featured in a commentary video by the talented Raycevick on YouTube who called it a “well produced satire.”