Title	#GAMINGWITHOUTBARRIERS
Brand	FANTASYEXPO/POLSKA LIGA ESPORTOWA
Product/Service	FANTASYEXPO/POLSKA LIGA ESPORTOWA
Category	D05. Audience Targeting or Distribution Strategy
Entrant	FANTASYEXPO Wroclaw, POLAND
Idea Creation	FANTASYEXPO Wroclaw, POLAND
Media Placement	FANTASYEXPO Wroclaw, POLAND
PR	FANTASYEXPO Wroclaw, POLAND
Production	FANTASYEXPO Wroclaw, POLAND
Post Production	FANTASYEXPO Wroclaw, POLAND

Name	Company	Position
Bartosz Wilczek	Fantasyexpo	Creative Manager

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

#GamingWithoutBarriers is an innovative project that aims to enable deaf people to experience the full excitement of esports matches. We created the first gaming Polish Sign Dictionary and prepared the world's first live esports broadcast translated into sign language. Overcoming barriers and enabling a wider group of fans to experience the best esports emotions, as well as creating a series of gifs that can be used in real-time communication for deaf people while watching esports broadcasts, was the leitmotif of our actions and an innovation on a global scale.

Background

In Poland there are approximately 900,000 people with hearing problems. Many people are negatively affected by digital exclusion. During the pandemic, when isolation took hold - it affected deaf people especially. They had to stop interpersonal relationships and meetings in their communities. As a gaming agency, we noticed this phenomenon and we decided to create an integration space for all deaf people. In November 2020, we created an esports dictionary for Counter Strike: Global-Offensive for the deaf. Our goal was to enable deaf people to fully perceive gaming, to understand it, to feel the emotion and the dynamics. The publication was created thanks to the cooperation and great involvement of people from the deaf community.

Describe the creative idea

We have created 19 new CS:GO sign for the Polish Sign Language dictionary. In addition, we produced a video for people who have never played the game before, explaining the rules and removing the barrier to entry into the world of Counter Strike. The video is educational to help people who have never played the game understand esports. We put the video on YouTube as a playlist: https://bit.ly/3gIy7Ke. Next, we created a series of GIFs that were a quick and easy way to build communication and education about gestures in games, as well as to break down the barriers of being overwhelmed by the amount of information (https://tenor.com/users/venrav). The final step was to implement interpreters during the game broadcast and real-time sign language interpretation for the deaf.

Describe the strategy

As an esports agency, we have seen an increase in the number of people watching individual broadcasts, interest in esports topics, and a general increase in sign language translation. We have also seen enthusiastic reactions to this feature. We contacted the deaf community, which made us realize the scale of interest in electronic sports among them. This enabled us to work with them and get their support in defining the target audience. We created a vision of the final product. In order to give deaf people the full esports match experience and get them interested in esport, we based our strategy on several pillars: creating signs and translating terms for CS:GO games, explaining the rules of the game, communicating the existence about dictionary. The highlight was to use the dictionary during an esports broadcast. The culmination of our activities was the live translation of esports matches.

Describe the execution

The CS:GO game has a unique vocabulary. We selected those words where we saw a necessity to create a new sign language. We engaged deaf people who were also esports fans to help. We recorded a video in our studio explaining the rules of the Counter Strike game. We put it all up on YouTube to make it available to the general public. Then we implemented and attempted sign language interpreters to broadcast. The schedule of activities was based on the schedule of the Polish Esport League games. We implemented the product during the finals of the championship division of the Polish Esports League in December 2020. We started communicating the project through our own social-media, Influencers and through mainstream, gaming and lifestyle media - one week before the games. The event had a global reach. Foreign media wrote about the event in numerous publications.

Describe the outcome

The matches were streamed live on Twitch & on Polsat Games TV and generated a total of 675,126 views. The playoffs featured 5 matches with a total viewing time of 130, 159 hours. The campaign had a very positive impact on the deaf community, who created their own hashtag #FanBezBarier during the broadcast. The #GWB campaign introductory video was viewed by 31,153 people on Facebook during the first weekend, while the promotional video on Tik-Tok received 130.6 thousand views and 622 likes within the first 24 hours. There were 48 press releases in Poland and Europe.