VIVA! 2026: Gaming PR Delivers 3.5x ROAS

In gaming, you can’t just show up to an event and call it gaming PR. You need a real strategy and numbers to back it up. For the indie studio ‘Nebula Forge,’ the VIVA! gaming convention in early 2026 was their big shot to launch their new IP, ‘Aethelgard Chronicles.’ They needed to get people talking, build wishlists, and start a community from scratch, all while competing with hundreds of other games for the same spotlight.

The Aethelgard Chronicles: Campaign Overview and Objectives

Nebula Forge had clear goals for Aethelgard Chronicles, their narrative RPG with a time-bending mechanic, heading into VIVA!. The main targets were:

• Generate 50,000 new Steam wishlists during the event week.
• Achieve over 1 million organic social media impressions related to the game.
• Secure 10+ high-tier media interviews/previews with outlets like IGN, PC Gamer, and GameSpot.
• Cultivate a Discord community of 5,000 new members.

The campaign had a $75,000 budget for all VIVA! marketing and PR, which had to stretch across booth design, staffing, travel, influencers, and paid media. We planned everything inside a tight four-week window: two weeks of pre-event hype, the three days of the convention, and one week of post-event follow-up to keep the momentum going.

Pre-Event Strategy: Building Anticipation and Targeted Outreach

We had to build hype for Aethelgard Chronicles before VIVA! even started. Just announcing it on the show floor would’ve been a waste of breath, so we focused hard on getting the right media and influencers on board early.

Media Relations: Exclusive Previews and Embargoes

We started our media push two weeks out from VIVA!. It wasn’t a huge email blast. We hand-picked 15 top-tier gaming journalists and offered them an exclusive, embargoed hands-on with a slice of Aethelgard Chronicles. Every pitch was tailored, we’d point out the time-manipulation puzzles to reporters who cover weird mechanics, for example. You have to know their beat.

The embargo broke on day one of the show, so the public reveal happened alongside a wave of coverage. This strategy worked, landing us **8 confirmed preview articles** in places like GameSpot and PC Gamer, plus 3 podcast interviews set to drop during the event. The early buzz was real. Google Trends showed a **250% jump in searches for “Aethelgard Chronicles”** the week before VIVA! compared to the month prior.

Influencer Marketing: Micro-Influencers and Content Partnerships

We knew we needed authentic voices, so we worked with 10 micro-influencers on Twitch and TikTok (in the 50k-200k follower range) who actually play narrative RPGs and indie titles. We didn’t just pay them for a shout-out. We gave them early access and let them run wild with it, which led to “first impression” streams, deep dives into the lore, and even challenge runs of the demo.

It paid off. One TikTok creator, who’s known for analyzing game stories, made a 60-second video on Aethelgard’s combat that pulled in over **300,000 views and a 2.8% engagement rate**. All told, the pre-event influencer work got us an estimated **1.2 million impressions**, mostly organic, because their excitement was real. Our cost per engagement (CPE) came out to about $0.08 which is an incredibly efficient use of the budget.

During-Event Execution: Maximizing On-Site Impact

Once VIVA! started, our whole plan shifted to getting as many eyes on the game and as many people playing as possible. Our booth was built to be an experience, not just a space, backing up everything we were doing online.

Booth Experience: The “Time-Twister” Demo

The Nebula Forge booth at VIVA! had a custom-built “Time-Twister” demo station. It was much more than a few PCs lined up on a table. We made it a whole sensory thing. Players walked into a dark room to play a 15-minute curated demo of Aethelgard Chronicles with haptic chairs and directional sound. We even had actors in costume as game characters talking to people in line, dropping lore bits and posing for pictures. This cost about 30% of our total budget, which felt like a gamble, but the results were undeniable.

The average person spent 18 minutes at a demo station, which tells you they were hooked. At the end of every demo, we had a QR code that went straight to the Steam wishlist page, which helped us get a **40% higher lead capture rate** (wishlists and sign-ups) than Nebula Forge’s older, more basic booths. Attendees also took over 500 photos and videos of the booth and posted them with our #AethelgardVIVA hashtag, which is free marketing.

Live Streaming and Content Hub

We set up a small streaming station right in the booth. Over the three days, developers did Q&As, showed off gameplay, and even pulled in some Twitch streamers for quick co-streams. We broadcasted everything to the official Nebula Forge Twitch channel and saved it to YouTube, which brought in another **250,000 live views** and let people who weren’t at VIVA! feel included.

We were also running a real-time social sentiment dashboard with a tool like Brandwatch the whole time. This let the PR team see what people were talking about, jump on negative comments right away, and boost the positive stuff. When some early players said a puzzle was confusing, for instance, our devs explained it on a live stream that same day, and we saw positive sentiment about that feature go up by **15% in 24 hours**.

Post-Event Follow-Up: Sustaining Momentum and Conversion

The show ending didn’t mean we were done. Our post-event work was all about turning all that buzz into actual wishlists and sales.

Media Follow-Ups and Review Codes

The day after VIVA! ended, we sent personal thank-you emails to every journalist who stopped by or got an early look. For the ones who seemed really into it, we offered a full (but still alpha) review code for Aethelgard Chronicles. Being fast and personal with this got us **3 more in-depth interviews** and promises for future coverage when the beta is ready. A generic follow-up email would’ve just been deleted.

Retargeting Campaigns and Community Engagement

We ran retargeting campaigns on Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager, but we broke up the audience based on how they interacted at VIVA!:

• High Engagement: People who scanned the QR code at the booth or watched over half of our streams. They got ads that screamed “Add to Wishlist.”
• Medium Engagement: Anyone who liked a social post or visited the website. They saw ads with pull quotes from the good reviews and influencer clips.
• Low Engagement: People who just saw an ad and kept scrolling. We hit them with brand awareness ads about the game’s core hook.

This specific targeting gave us a **4.2% CTR** for the high-engagement group with an **18% conversion rate** on wishlist adds. Our total return on ad spend (ROAS) for this post-show push was **3.5x**, for every dollar we spent, we made $3.50 in potential revenue. The average cost to get a wishlist add was just $0.75.

A week after VIVA!, we also did a developer AMA on Reddit and Discord to answer questions from people who’d seen the game. It created a direct line to the community and grew our Discord server by another **20%** that week.

Results and Key Learnings

In the end, the Aethelgard Chronicles campaign for VIVA! blew past most of our initial targets:

• Steam Wishlists: 62,000 new wishlists (124% of target).
• Organic Social Impressions: 1.8 million (180% of target).
• Media Coverage: 11 high-tier previews/interviews (110% of target).
• Discord Community: 6,500 new members (130% of target).

What Worked Well:

1. Experiential Booth Design: The “Time-Twister” demo was a huge win. It pulled people in, got them talking, and brought in solid leads. Spending that much on a physical booth felt risky, but the engagement numbers showed it was worth it.
2. Targeted Pre-Event Outreach: Getting exclusives to media and letting micro-influencers in early created real interest before the show doors even opened. That meant we had coverage ready to go live the second VIVA! started.
3. Real-Time Adaptation: Using the sentiment dashboard to react quickly was a big deal. We could fix problems on the fly and show everyone that the developers were actually listening.

What Didn’t Work as Expected:

1. Over-reliance on Paid Booth Promoters: We wasted money on paid promoters. We hired a few to get people to the booth, but they came off as generic and fake. Having our own developers or the costumed actors talk to people worked way better. That was a $2,000 lesson.
2. Email Newsletter Sign-ups at Booth: Getting email sign-ups at the booth was a failure. People were happy to scan a QR code for a Steam wishlist, but they wouldn’t stop to type in an email. Next time, we need to add a “sign up with Steam” button or offer something good for their email on the spot.

Optimization Steps Taken for Future Events:

For the next show, Nebula Forge is going to:

• Make email capture easier, maybe with a single sign-on through Steam or by giving away an exclusive cosmetic to anyone who signs up right there.
• Take the money from generic booth promoters and spend it on more character actors or a community manager who can talk to fans about the game’s lore.
• Use social listening to not just watch our own brand, but to see what other games are getting buzz and figure out why, so we can adjust our own content.

The Aethelgard Chronicles campaign at VIVA! is a perfect example of what modern event marketing in gaming looks like. You have to mix cool, in-person experiences with smart digital work and be ready to change your plan based on real data. You can’t just be loud. You have to be loud in the right places.