Apex Legends Season 13 featured The Gaiden Event — a 2-week long activation that reimagined Apex characters in an anime style and featured event-limited cosmetics and game modes. We partnered with EA to promote this in-game event in a unique way that would celebrate the worlds of anime and gaming, excite core Apex fans, and also introduce Apex to a brand new audience.

In order to do this, we looked to the booming Vtuber community, which has seen exponential growth and interest in the past few years. Melding the worlds of anime, gaming, and streaming together, we developed six Vtuber avatars, based on the anime-inspired in-game skins. We next developed a multi-channel campaign leveraging our vtubers and content creators across Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter.

We first created three Vtuber avatars based off of Apex fan favorites Octane, Mirage, and Bangalore. These avatars were announced, via EA's Apex blog, and were free to download. Our goal was for fans everywhere to have the opportunity to create their own content using their favorite Apex characters.

We next partnered with a seasoned Vtuber, Vienna, to make a tutorial for the public on how to get started with the downloadable assets we were providing.

To ensure that we were also engaging with the core fanbase, we then leveraged top Apex content creators, iiTzTimmy, NiceWigg, and Bnans, and created bespoke Vtuber avatars that were not only inspired by the in-game anime skins, but were also personalized for each creator. Their Vtubers were truly bespoke as we made sure to combine their personalities with the Apex character they main. The animations and facial expressions were unique to them and their emotes were based on ones their communities frequently used in chat.

iiTzTimmy, NiceWigg, and Bnans then made their Vtuber debut on Code Miko’s stream. As the grand-finale, we hosted a hide and seek match in Apex with our Vtuber creators along with FPS streamers Shroud and Hamb1no so fans could see these avatars in action.