The Sims is 25. Call of Duty is 20. Candy Crush is 13. And Zelda is creeping up on its 40th birthday. Video games that people grew up playing have turned into franchises, and those franchises are now hiring serious, heavyweight brand agencies – we’re talking teams that have worked with the likes (and budgets) of Airbnb, Microsoft and Bose. It’s a movement that’s brought together Collins x The Sims, DesignStudio x EA Sports and Koto x Call of Duty.

And it makes sense. In the past, all games companies really needed was some eye-catching cover artwork and some ads, and the sales rolled in. Nowadays titles have longer lifespans, more platforms and a vastly bigger potential audience. More than that, games makers have realised they’re sitting on some of the most valuable IP in the world, and they need equally high calibre creative teams to help them brand it.

“It’s almost the best opportunity for brand; it’s so emotional and the relationships that people have with titles are so much more invested than with technology companies, for example,” says Jowey Roden, CCO and founder at Koto. “It’s much more akin to a sports team, and the fandom you’d experience there. For lack of a better word, it’s brand love, essentially.”

Let’s pause for a minute and ask: how much genuine brand love is there in the world? People might quite like their Kenwood mixer, or their Starface pimple patches or their icy cold Amstel, but love? By contrast, gamers are deeply committed. We’re talking about an intense, long-lasting enthusiasm and affection that’s been built up, in some cases, over tens of hundreds of hours.

And in a time when people’s relationships with technology giants such as Google, Meta and Amazon feel increasingly contentious, gaming looks at the world through its own lens. As tech companies try to be as all-encompassing as possible, games-makers are taking a more pointed approach.

“They have a vision for a universe they’re trying to create,” according to Roden. “The brand needs to be an extension of that universe; it needs to convey a really strong, narrow perspective. And it’s such a different ask. All of us collectively understand the tone of what a technology brand or a hospitality brand should feel like, but gaming isn’t like that; there’s a hundred different niches.”

It’s almost the best opportunity for brand; it’s so emotional and the relationships that people have with titles are so much more invested than with technology companies, for example

That raises a critical question: who can or should be doing this kind of work? Does the creative team need to be a gang of avid gamers? Should they know and love whatever franchise they’re working on? Is it OK if they haven’t touched a console since the late 80s? Well, actually, yes.

“Crypto is the only other similar example I can think of,” says Roden. “You have to know the space because it has its own vernacular, its own language, its own references, its own memes. And unless you’re authentically of that space, I think it’s hard to represent. Games are exactly the same.

“When Koto started working with Activision, my pitch was that I’d played Call of Duty for more years of my life than I hadn’t, and with that comes a set of references, a history and an understanding of what the game’s been. That’s a very hard thing to onboard yourself with if you haven’t grown up with it, and understood the comfort of it.”

In fact, Roden has built part of Koto’s studio in LA around this idea. The team gets together to play video games multiple times a week, and those are the same creatives that work on any gaming opportunities.

And when Koto is working with a games client, the team is fully immersed in the narrative, the character design, the gameplay loops and everything else, with the final branding driven by the game itself. “I think it’s the only thing I’ve ever done where product understanding isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s absolutely critical,” says Roden.

Increasingly, brand agencies are getting involved with games at a deeper level. For example, Koto’s work on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 included developing a typeface that’s used in the game’s UI, as well as motion principles for how things animate on-screen. Brand is being brought into every part of a game universe, including things like esports, or seasonal content, or merch. “Ultimately it’s selling you a connected universe,” explains Roden. “It’s like the MCU of each of these games. The more immersive and consistent that is, the less you break the sense of universality.”

At this point, it’s hard not to ask an obvious difficult question. If branding is so important, why do games with such incredibly naïve visual identities (I’m looking at you Farming Simulator) do so well? When games are making so much money, why bother hiring a brand agency?

That initial direction is the course you chart for the entire game’s lifespan. Fortnite’s original aesthetic is still very much what the brand is

According to Roden, the answer’s simple: saturation. It’s not the 80s or the 90s, when games were released at a cadence that now feels glacial. For context, in 1992 Nintendo released something like 112 games in North America; in 2024, Steam added more than 14k games to its platform, all of which are piled up on the shoulders of the previous year’s 11k, and the previous year’s 10k and … well, you get the point.

“You have to have a sense of differentiation,” says Roden, “or at least a strong sense of yourself to exist in that market. Without that understanding of who you are, you can’t really extend into all these other properties.

“It used to be: here’s the box of the game; now you exist on Steam, PSN, Xbox marketplace, TikTok, Twitch. The universes for these brands are growing massively, and the most relevant brands have enough touchpoints that they exist beyond the title itself.”

It’s not just the number of platforms either. Games live much longer than they used to. Historic titles are finding huge success in remasters and re-releases or backwards compatibility, while live service games can continue evolving for years at a time, planned across multiple seasons and collaborations.

Franchises are another major thing. There’s not just one single Zelda game, or one Assassin’s Creed – these are multiple chapters that live in the same universe, and people expect a certain level of consistency. It wouldn’t be Zelda without the Triforce, or The Sims without the plumbob, or Mario without the one-up mushroom.

And if you’ve played the first Ghost of Tsushima, you’ll have probably noticed – even if only subconsciously – that the recently announced sequel follows a similar type and motif style that makes it instantly recognisable. If games makers want to keep their audience across different iterations and chapters, they need to anchor them to a brand from the get-go.

“That initial direction is the course you chart for the entire game’s lifespan,” says Roden. “Fortnite’s original aesthetic is still very much what the brand is, and it underlines the importance of getting it right the first time. From there, you’re only iterating on the vision.”

Gamers probably have mixed feelings about the idea of ‘branding’ and ‘gaming’ crossing streams, particularly as recent years have seen increasing amounts of cynicism over companies using loot boxes and micropayments to maximise profits. In this environment, agencies have to tread carefully to create branding that improves rather than impedes the experience.

But what’s clear from talking to Roden is just what a joyful thing that is to do – and what a huge opportunity there is for the kind of agency that lives in the rare part of the Venn diagram where graphic design, Swiss type and avid gaming meet.

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