Dytomic (2025)
Role: Community Manager
Tools: Confluence, Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe AfterEffects
Platforms: Discord, YouTube, Instagram, X/Twitter, TikTok
Timeline: January-March 2025
OVERVIEW
From January to late March 2025, I worked with Dytomic, a game development company based in Montreal, Quebec, as a Community Manager. I worked primarily to promote Dytomic's upcoming release Pirate Raids: Conquest (PRC), a mobile collectible card game with a unique battlefield set in pirate fantasy world.
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After creating a virtual deck of 20 cards and choosing a Captain represent yourself on the battlefield, players would take turns playing Fighter Cards on a grid based battlefield where they can move cards in the cardinal directions (similar to chess). Once a player's Fighter Card reaches the other side of the battlefield, they can attack the opponent's Captain to deal damage. Players can support this effort by using a variety of Fighter card effects, runic spell cards (that do not persist on the battlefield), and their captain's special ability that helps inform their deckbuilding strategy. First player to drop the opponent's health points (HP) to 0 wins the game.​​
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​My Contributions:
My duties primarily consisted of creating promotional graphics and videos for PRC alongside making content plans, interacting with the game's budding community on Discord, and managing PRC's social media platforms. I also attended a variety of meetings throughout the week, using the opportunity to ask questions to help inform my social media planning.
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The first month of my time at Dytomic involved mainly planning and augmenting PRC's social media platforms. This included creating a Linktree to aggregate all of PRC's social media links, creating an important connective tissue to get potential players interested in Pirate Raids: Conquest. I also edited PRC's social media settings, editing descriptions, optimizing account settings, and adding the Linktree where possible. I also wrote and organized a couple of social media documents on the company's Confluence in order to make a content plan.
An example of a graphic I made to promote PRC's first alpha playtest
​By February, I transitioned to my main role in creating content to help promote Pirate Raids: Conquest. I created graphics as well as a couple of short videos for PRC's social media platforms, mainly focusing on showcasing cards and asset development on the game.
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This would be my main routine for the rest of my tenure with Dytomic alongside monitoring their social media platforms and interacting with prospective game testers on PRC's Discord server. Dytomic was set to have a demo playtest of PRC in early April, so most of my efforts were working towards that goal.
An example of an Instagram Post I made for Pirate Raids: Conquest, showcasing a Fighter Card from the game while also giving some usage tips on the second picture.
Skills & Tools
A YouTube Video Short I made showcasing progress made on the 3D Captain model of the Runeborne character Kierga
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Wrote a content marketing plan on Confluence, creating calendars and lists of ideas to coordinate social media marketing efforts
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Managed multiple social media platforms (YouTube, X/Twitter, Instagram, Discord, TikTok), interacting with community members and gathering feedback and engagement metrics
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Created Assets using industry standard tools such as Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, and AfterEffects
The Challenge
An early playtest promotional graphic
While working at a startup company has its fair share of well-known hurdles, my time with Dytomic was uniquely daunting in how my approach to social media marketing was challenged. I joined the team during early production of Pirate Raids: Conquest, and faced a difficult task in trying to promote the game's pre-alpha demo with minimal assets.
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With video footage unavailable until late February, I created a content plan to try and circumvent this through using what PRC did have: its card designs and artworks. Working with the Art Director, we created a post template that I would use to create card reveal posts that I could schedule throughout the week. This helped keep a steady production of posts until I could finally obtain video footage of the game.
Once video footage was finally available, I recorded videos using Bluestacks to play the mobile game from my computer. Cutting the clips into various short pieces, I planned to use them to help selectively demonstrate the game's mechanics, an important step when marketing a new video game.
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I ran into an issue however, as company leadership deemed that the game in its current form had too low visual fidelity to unveil to the public. This had me reevaluate my content plan entirely in March as I could not use any video footage. To help patch the gaps, card reveal posts were slowed down in frequency, and I came up with a couple of extra post ideas such as a post to help celebrate St. Patrick's Day in March 2025 (as seen on the right).
A St. Patrick's Day-themed post made through coordinating with the team's 2D artist
Another unique challenge came in the form of company branding. I was initially forbidden from adding watermarks on graphics that I made for social media. This was quite perplexing for me, as previous experience with Mountain Side Games as well as my own social media ventures taught me the importance of watermarks, especially in converting passing viewers to followers. This was especially critical for Pirate Raids: Conquest as our goal for the first demo playtest was to gather as many players as possible to test the game out in PRC's Discord server.
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After politely disputing this idea, I eventually followed through and began posting without watermarks throughout February 2025. When the month concluded, I took the various social media metrics from across PRC's online platforms and recorded the amount of engagement posts had versus the amount of new players that joined the Discord server over the month. I then brought the data to management and reiterated my point regarding watermarks. With proper data, my argument was understood and I was allowed to add watermarks and small branding on graphics going into March. This was an important social problem-solving event as I was able to politely make my point and augment the content quality of the posts I was making without making leadership lose face or feel like they were specifically wrong.
My final hurdle was in video content planning as I clashed with company leadership over video making methods. A coworker's use of CapCut, a swift and simple video editor with powerful built-in effects, misled company leadership over time estimates to create longer videos. By contrast, my use of Adobe Creative Suite allowed me to create more specific edits at the cost of taking longer time. This caused problems as I could not create content at the speed that management wanted with flashy visual effects.
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Rectify this issue, I took it upon myself to learn CapCut and its drag-and-drop video effects, but was unable to receive a premium license from the company for the software, meaning I could not export any videos with the effects needed. Ultimately, it was decided that I would not work on large-scale videos given that we did not have much game footage to use in the first place.
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This was a difficult challenge without a single correct answer as the company resources simply weren't there to meet management's high expectations for video content. I was able to write a plethora of scripts introducing and explaining game concepts, but we simply lacked the ability to provide visuals (be in-person visuals or virtual footage) to make what the company's leadership wanted.
Final Reflection
A collection of emotes made using card artwork for Pirate Raids: Conquest's Discord server for community engagement
At the end of March, company leadership received unfortunate news that they were losing funding for Dytomic due to various sudden economic changes. This meant that I had to be let go as the team down-sized to work on a minimal development pipeline.
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Overall, my time at Dytomic was very beneficial for me as I obtained experience working in game development marketing firsthand. The challenges I was presented with during my time working there were the type anyone in creative development could face and it was good to learn to how to deal with certain situations.
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Ultimately, I was not able to grow Pirate Raids: Conquest's reach in the same way I was able to grow Mountain Side Games' or my own channels. However, given the lack of resources I had to work with, I believe that I did the best I could with what I was given. I hope to use the valuable experience I gained in future social media projects and positions going forward.