Hyperliminal makes Hideout, a Club Penguin-style world that runs inside Discord as an Activity. Every server, even every channel, gets its own space that its community builds and decorates together.
A third place, right where people already hang out.
I worked on contract, as an adviser. The job had two parts:
- Get the game into communities that already existed.
- Show people what Discord's new Activity SDK made possible.
Beluga
- The deal. $300 bought 14 days of promotion in discord.gg/beluga, a server with 968,000 members, including a dedicated @everyone call to action.
- The event. I planned a multi-day building contest, hosted by Beluga's own moderators, with cash prizes for the best rooms.
- The items. Cosmetics made just for the event, from Beluga masks to a throne.
- The catch. It ran during the beta, so I did QA throughout and worked with the developers to log and fix issues as they came up.
Items made for the Beluga event.
Cartoon Universe
- The deal. A $30 gift card bought a spot in a Cartoon Universe video with 460,000 views, plus a call to action in their 9,638-member Discord, with channels for members to talk about the game and share builds.
- The event. Another multi-day building contest hosted by their moderators, with cash prizes, and QA alongside it again while the game was in beta.
Made for the Cartoon Universe event.
Rebuilding Discord's booth
The big goal was a spot on Discord's rotating Activities list. To make the case, we flew to GDC and rebuilt Discord's conference booth inside the game. Visitors could walk through a virtual copy of the booth and talk to NPCs about Discord's latest focus, especially the Social SDK.
While the art team worked around the clock on the booth, we found print shops in San Francisco that could turn custom stickers around in time. Each sticker had a QR code straight into the game, handed out to people at the booth.
What came of it:
- Hideout featured across Discord's social channels.
- Discord staff spotted with our stickers on their laptops.
- A surge of players straight from the QR codes.
- 100,000 players from the Discord promotion we secured.
Discord's booth, inside Hideout, on Discord's socials.
Our stickers, on Discord's socials.
The world map mural, recreated from Discord's office wall.
Log in with Discord and try it yourself.
