Smiling man holding a paintbrush beside a pinball backbox with a waterfall diorama, "JACKPOT" display, "NOT EVEN HALF"
Submitted by Game Influencer

The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War YouTube Pinball Rebuild

Influencer Marketing

Game Influencer ran a single-creator YouTube campaign for NetEase's The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War, built around a custom pinball rebuild that the agency reports reached 273K+ views.

273K+Total Views
10K+Total Likes

Case in 60 seconds

NetEase needed to promote the lore and ten factions of The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War, a mobile strategy war game, to the English-speaking market, which meant explaining geo-strategic gameplay built around control of Middle-earth.

The campaign turns on fandom rather than gameplay footage, because the page describes The Lord of the Rings universe as one with a lot of fans, so a handcrafted object from that world could carry interest back to the game.

Game Influencer built the campaign around one dedicated YouTube video in which Squidmar Miniatures rebuilt a rare The Lord of the Rings pinball machine from the stern, which the page describes as different from all its previous campaigns.

Squidmar Miniatures, a YouTube creator with 523K+ subscribers, spent two weeks adding miniatures, painting them up and making dioramas using game workshop figures, then published a 30-minute video of the fully customized pinball machine on YouTube.

Game Influencer reports 273K+ total views and 10K+ total likes from the campaign, and the page says the rebuild impressed commenters while new players learned about the title through the video.

Strategy Breakdown

Fans of The Lord of the Rings universe in the English-speaking market, along with new players who did not yet know the title.
The game sits inside the established The Lord of the Rings universe, so the campaign used that universe's fan base as the entry point rather than introducing the title through its mechanics alone.
Fans of the universe responded to the craft of the rebuild in the comments, which the page links to reviving interest in the game and to new players learning about the title.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • YouTube

Partners

  • Game Influencer

Creator role

  • Squidmar Miniatures — creator

Results & Evidence

MetricValue
Total Views273K+ views
Total Likes10K+ likes

Why Game Influencer's strategy worked

  1. 1

    A single creator whose craft matches the property's world can carry a game message, because the rebuild gave fans of The Lord of the Rings a reason to watch that did not depend on the game itself.

  2. 2

    Long-form making content suits lore-heavy titles, since a 30-minute build video leaves room for the setting to be shown in detail rather than compressed into a short advertisement.

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