VALORANT Premium Content
“Premium Content.” It’s an oddly clinical term to describe one of the most critical components of in-game self-expression. For millions of VALORANT players, weapon skins are a valuable way to show off their individual style and taste. The weapon skins, sprays, player cards, gun buddies, and titles that players use to display their passions and their in-game player personas are also the most critical drivers of revenue for VAL.
Premium Content is based on a wide range of genres and events designed to reflect a player’s interests. Genres like Anime, Manga, D&D, CyberPunk, Westerns, PC Modding, EdgelordCore, the color Pink, key events within the VALORANT community, like VCT Champions, and significant global cultural moments, such as Lunar New Year, have all received the VALORANT spin. And therein lies the key. All Premium Content is translated through the VALORANT brand to ultimately create something that feels familiar and authentic to the source material yet, at the same time, fresh for players.
Concept art from “Glitchpop”
trailer development
Kawaii Killer
Glitchpop is an ad spot for a weapon skinline from a cyberpunk-cyberpop world obsessed with over-the-top branding. It’s a glitchy, spastic, marketing-as-content overload that highlights the colorful but deadly brand mascots that adorn the skinline both as traditional stickers and futuristic holograms. The Shibuya Crossing-on-acid-inspired spot takes advantage of multiple written and spoken languages, with custom subtitles reflecting a global melting pot that allowed us to use one version for various markets.
IG chase campaign post
Shots “Fired”...
Elderflame was VALORANT’s first Ultra Edition skin. It was a reaffirmation of VALORANT’s goal to evolve the TAC-FPS space into a genre and experience that many players, up until then, didn’t know they could love. From its smokey snout to its scaly tail, the innovative animations (you’re feeding the ammo mags to a live dragon!), sfx (each dragon is distinct), multiple color variations, and the fiery finisher animation, Elderflame set a new standard for premium weapon skinlines.
Elderflame was so different from the norm that the best way to represent it to players was through a relatively straightforward gameplay capture-driven trailer. We opted to just let the dragons cook.
A Futuristic Fable in Two Parts
Set in a protopian future, part 1 “Wield Your Fate” (the first ION skin bundle) calls upon the player to reawaken and wield the ultimate weapon, ION, to defend humanity against an encroaching darkness. At its heart ION is a love letter to fans of that sleek hyper-futuristic sci-fi aesthetic paired with the mythos of the lone hero.
In part 2 “The New Era,” we see the lone hero and the next ION skin bundle in full effect, in both the world of ION and in gameplay. These two bundles were released 3 years apart, which makes this a nice example of how we were continuously evolving our approach to live service marketing in response to how the core player base was developing.
VALORANT’s First Collab
Zedd is the Grammy award winner who co-created Spectrum and is better than most of us at VALORANT. Preeti Khanolkar, the senior producer on the Premium Content team, has gone so far as to dub Zedd, a game developer. Fair, given the amount of sound design and creation Zedd injected into the Spectrum skinline. In fact, that was the key to the collab (and all future VALORANT collabs), the co-creation of value for players. Rather than just a payment or granting access to VAL players in exchange for “authenticity via proximity.”
So, it was almost a no-brainer to have Zedd front and center to introduce Spectrum in the style of TED Talks and high-end tech presentations.
Not Your Grandma’s LNY
As a global brand that seeks to participate in the culture of our players, Lunar New Years is always a significant moment. But we could see that LNY was evolving. Across Asian regions that observed LNY, Gen Z was seeking a more modern approach that eschewed the older aesthetic trappings and maudlin sentimentality that was normally associated with the holiday. For the Year of the Tiger, we replaced red envelopes with bold pixel mosh graphics, heavily stylized typography, and a driving track, “Birdz” by Wuki featuring Smokepurpp.
A Neon Sci-Fi Western
The Neo Frontier skinline is an excellent example of taking advantage of both internal team strengths as well as developing creative partner skill sets. We leveraged Riot’s internal music supervision discipline to find the perfect modern take on an Ennio Morricone spaghetti western track, while we leaned on Riot’s internal CG services team to provide animation direction to our partner Dark Burn Creative, who were able to repurpose different map components and Agent select models to recreate the opening western town scene as well as the shoot out action.
Featured
Headshots Not Included
Manufactured by in-VAL-universe toy company Playzilla, the BlastX trailer is rooted in those nostalgic Nerf commercials from the 90’s, but with a more polished look that meshes well with the in-game experience. While the skin line is toy-like, the full reveal displays how its looks don’t take anything away from the lethality of its gameplay. BlastX is for players who appreciate the irony of a toy-like lethal weapon that they can troll others with when they get the kill.
We also created a quick teaser spot from Playzilla that utilized the key USP from BlastX (the suction darts), and appeared across our social media channels.
This is just a sampling of the myriad premium content mini-campaigns that were constantly shipping. Virtually the whole marketing team and a significant number of devs contributed.
Tom Nguyen / Thiago Gutierrez / Chris Tom / Mike Schaefer / Nikki Lewis / Claire Gregory / Brandon Meier / Kim Koszoru / Chase Madrid / Drew Stauffer / Nathan Hower / Trevor Thernes / Eddie Kim / Mark Diaz / Ali Miller / Laura Baltzer-Bonilla / Corby Deglow / Ke Su / Atey Ghailan / Mike Schaeffer / Tone Hoeft / Margaret McClure / Chris Hunt / Preeti Khanolkar / Sean Marino / Vin Rella / Jenna Sotelo / Dylan Bates / Winnie Huang / Mark Bryner / Jonny Altepeter
creative partners:
Mischief and Corruption
The first Oni skinline bundle outperformed everyone’s expectations. When it was time to release Oni 2.0 we decided to lean in and make it an event for fans of the skinline and those players who missed out on acquiring Oni 1.0. Like the skinline itself, the trailer seamlessly blends an updated take on the Japanese Oni mythology and aesthetic with the hallmarks of the VAL brand; graphic typography, an updated take on the music selection, and Unapologetically Global (outside of the actual weapon type names, the piece is entirely in Japanese).
To date, the Oni 2.0 skinline bundle remains the 2nd-highest performing skinline of all time.
