Game media agency The Invaders make Fortnite community turn in-game lights off during Earth Hour

How do you mobilise younger generations worldwide to do something positive for our planet? You engage them through something they are already passionate about: gaming.

Game media agency The Invaders recently brought together Earth Hour and Epic Games - Fortnite’s game publisher - to bring a whole new dimension to Earth Hour by taking it online and turning off the lights in-game.

World's largest grassroots movements for the environment

Born in Sydney in 2007, Earth Hour has grown to become the world's largest grassroots movements for the environment, inspiring individuals, communities, businesses and organizations in more than 190 countries and territories to take tangible environmental action. Historically, Earth Hour has focused on the climate crisis, but more recently, Earth Hour has strived to also bring the pressing issue of nature loss to the fore. The aim is to create an unstoppable movement for nature, as it did when the world came together to tackle climate change.

Reaching new target audiences

Gaming consultant Pieter Doove: “Reaching new target audiences for these kinds of social impact initiatives via the world of gaming is what we do best. Sometimes, only little effort is needed to take an impactful idea and bring it to the younger generations. In this case, we did so by bringing it to Fortnite Creative. Our global contacts and track record in this field made it possible for us to bring Epic Games and the global Earth Hour team at WWF International together to explore ways to ‘turn off the lights’ in-game”.

Epic Games picked up the gauntlet and gathered several professional Fortnite Creative build teams, allowing them to take Earth Hour to the world of Fortnite. Enthusiastic right off the bat, the teams went on to create activations that would raise awareness for Earth Hour inside their most popular Fortnite experiences. And so millions of players, on the weekend of March 25^th and 26^th, were  only be able to navigate some Fortnite experiences using an in-game flashlight as, for the first time ever, the lights are switched off, online.

Player-first strategy

Pieter Doove: “Gamers will be gamers. Sure, you could say it would be better to completely shut down all consoles and devices during Earth Hour. That could be a next step. Right now, the focus is on creating awareness for the initiative. We use what we call the ‘player-first’ strategy in all our work: we improve the experience of the player whilst telling an impactful story. These current activations are in line with that strategy. Entirely shutting down the game, would be less suited to that vision.

Gaming media agency The Invaders is behind multiple social impact cases within the world of gaming: from blood donation for Dutch Bloodbank Sanquin, to stimulating youngsters to read more for CPNB, and making mental health a more frequently discussed topic on Twitch with Dutch health insurance company CZ Just.

Epic games greenlighted the initiative but this activation is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by Epic games.

www.theinvaders.nl

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