Where does a game's "first impression" come from?

Naturally, the first things that come to mind are the logo representing the title and the key art encountered in storefronts. However, once a game launches and expands into DLC, sequels, merchandise, and advertising beyond the game itself, maintaining the game's identity becomes difficult through these two elements alone.

On August 24 at gamescom dev in Cologne, Germany, Matt Redway, Senior Creative Director, and Alanna Cervenak, Senior Manager of Art and Design at PlayStation Creative Arts, took the stage to explain how to build a game's brand system. The session was titled "Beyond the Logo: Crafting Comprehensive Brand Systems for Games." The official session description focused on moving beyond logos and key art to create brand systems based on core visual elements and expanding them across the game, marketing, and publishing.

What the two speakers emphasized was that a game's brand should be viewed as a "system" rather than a simple logo or image. A brand is born with the game, but as the game grows, it passes through many people and media formats. Therefore, from the start, developers must separate what can change from what must stay fixed, creating rules so that regardless of who uses it, it feels like the same game.

"Even if you remove the title, you should still recognize the game"

Matt Redway began the talk by showing images of several game logos with their titles removed. Even with the words gone, the audience was able to guess which game it was based solely on typography, layout, and color.

His message was simple: if elements like typography, layout, color palette, and lettering styles become part of a strong enough brand, the title should remain recognizable even if the name is removed.

Therefore, a game's brand is not defined by logos and key art alone. Typography, color palettes, shapes, textures, and various other visual elements work together to form a unified visual identity. The elements created this way are used not only in launch campaigns but across every medium where the game appears.

What matters is that all these elements originate from a single core concept. Redway explained that the components forming a brand should stem from the game's core concept or unique traits. Even when used in different contexts, as long as they come from the same roots, they naturally form a consistent system.

Alanna Cervenak took this a step further, emphasizing that a game brand should be designed not as a static deliverable, but as an evolving system.

A game does not end at launch. DLC and seasons get added, sequels may be developed, and the IP might even expand into entirely different mediums like board games. Therefore, developers must look beyond creating a single logo or advertisement for immediate needs and consider future content from the start.

Cervenak described this system as closer to a "rubber band" than a fixed mountain. It means keeping the core strong and clear while allowing it to bend and stretch to accommodate new content. Ultimately, the crucial step in building a game brand is **deciding what to keep fixed and what to allow to change**.

She summarized this philosophy: "Consistency gives players something to recognize, while flexibility gives them something to look forward to."

Returnal: Turning a Game's Core Theme into a Brand

Redway introduced Housemarque's "Returnal" as a case study for this brand-building process.

Returnal is a roguelike third-person shooter where protagonist Selene is stranded on an alien planet, trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth. While it is a sci-fi game featuring intense bullet-hell gameplay and alien creatures, beneath the surface lies a narrative exploring Selene's past, trauma, and the blurring line between reality and hallucination. The gameplay loop of repeated death and rebirth is deeply connected to this narrative.

The brand design process began right there. After receiving game design documentation, scripts, and concept art from the developers, the team analyzed the project to find core themes to express through the brand. Elements such as alien imagery, water, fractured consciousness, and death and rebirth emerged as candidates.

The key motif chosen for the final key art was Selene's helmet. At a glance, the main character wearing a spacesuit and holding a gun communicates the sci-fi shooter genre, but looking closer reveals numerous helmets scattered around her.

These helmets are dissolved in acid, shattered by heavy impact, or marked by alien lifeforms—depicting the various deaths Selene experiences in the game. On the visor of the intact helmet, reflections show narrative elements like car headlights and her childhood home. The artwork was designed to convey two layers of information within a single image: the game's genre and its deeper story.

This expression did not stop with the key art. The crumbling, particle-like effect on the edges of the logo served as a metaphor for Selene's fracturing mental state, and this same design language carried over into the game's UI and marketing materials.

Redway particularly emphasized the connection between game UI, branding, and marketing. By re-encountering the same colors, shapes, and visual styles from the game in ads and trailers, players feel that these distinct assets all stem from a single, unified game world.

OlliOlli World: Looking Like the Same Game Even Through Change

When a brand created inside a game starts extending outside of it, things become even more complex.

Cervenak explained that once a game launches, the brand is used across trailers, storefronts, billboards, and merchandise, and the people creating these materials are no longer limited to the original brand architects.

Therefore, the benchmark of a good brand system is not how great it looks when created by its original author. What matters is providing enough tools and rules so that anyone who receives the brand can make the right decisions.

Roll7's "OlliOlli World" was introduced as an example of this approach.

OlliOlli World features a unique visual style combining vibrant colors, soft bubbly shapes, and carefree skate culture. Rather than keeping these traits confined to in-game graphics, the development team leveraged them as a language to build the brand.

The rounded, soft shapes used in the game's buildings, characters, UI, and rails were repurposed as ad backgrounds, buttons, and speech bubbles. This allowed audiences to recognize the feel of OlliOlli World purely through color and shape, even without a logo present.

This system was also applied to different game editions and DLC.

Between the standard edition and the "RAD Edition" (which includes additional content), the storefront assets needed to immediately signal that they were distinct products while maintaining the impression of being the same game. To achieve this, identifiable elements like logo shape and handwritten styling were retained, while the color palette and subtitle typography were altered.

The same principle applied to DLC expansions. "VOID Riders" created a mysterious, alien atmosphere using deep purples and blacks, while "Finding the Flowzone" utilized bright colors like white and soft blue. Although the mood shifted dramatically, the underlying shapes and design language remained intact.

Cervenak explained, "You can change the mood without having to change the identity."

Even Ads Can Become Part of the Game World

There are also more active examples of brands expanding beyond the game. Cervenak highlighted Obsidian Entertainment's "The Outer Worlds."

The world of The Outer Worlds features numerous fictional corporations and brands satirizing hyper-capitalism and corporate culture. These are not mere background lore, but vital elements that shape the game.

The marketing team leveraged this in real-world advertising. Instead of the traditional approach where a publisher promotes a game to players, messaging was crafted as if in-game corporations were directly advertising products to real-world consumers. In effect, fictional in-game brands became real-world marketers promoting the game.

Cervenak explained that the goal of this approach goes beyond merely advertising a game. The goal is to extend the game's universe into reality, creating opportunities for players to interact with that world even outside the game itself.

Ultimately, elements like ads, merchandise, and events do not need to be viewed as mere external promotional tools. If a game's identity is firmly established, these assets can serve as additional spaces to convey the game's world.

"Build for recognition, design for possibility"

Concluding their presentation, the two speakers offered three takeaways to remember when building a game brand system.

First, "define the core." Not every brand element needs to be locked down. Instead, identify the key elements that make the game recognizable, hold onto them, and allow room for other elements to evolve.

Second, "design for expansion." It is impossible to predict every future DLC, sequel, advertisement, or piece of merchandise from the beginning. However, teams can build a system in advance with enough rules and flexibility to adapt when new opportunities arise.

Last, "utilize every touchpoint." A brand does not exist solely in massive billboards or key art. Every player interaction—from storefront pages and trailers to small achievement icons unlocked in-game—is a moment to experience the brand.

Cervenak summarized this in a single sentence:

"Build for recognition, design for possibility."

Make it recognizable, but design it for possibility.