Following decades of rally game experience with the Colin McRae Rally & DiRT titles, Codemasters earned the rights to develop the official game of the FIA World Rally Championship, with its first title releasing in 2023.
After completing my work as Social Media & Community Manager for DiRT Rally 2.0, I took on the same role for EA SPORTS WRC, playing a significant part in devising & executing the game's communication strategy for a global audience.
My work on EA SPORTS WRC involved social media, community management, developer liaison, copywriting, graphic design, esports, partnerships, motorsport communications & much more. Working with several cross-functional teams & external stakeholders, I played a pivotal role in fostering & nurturing a vibrant & passionate community engaged with one of the most exciting series in all of motorsport.
I continued to work on EA SPORTS F1 23, 24, 25 & Need for Speed Unbound throughout my time on EA SPORTS WRC.
Social Rebrand & Franchise Launch
EA SPORTS WRC was not only an all-new franchise for Electronic Arts, it was the evolution of DiRT, a gaming brand that had existed for over 15 years.
In order to give this new series the best first impression and largest audience possible, I collaborated with all social media platform providers to secure the @EASPORTSWRC social handle & coordinated the simultaneous changeover from @DiRTgame to @EASPORTSWRC in line with the new game's official reveal.
Prior to this, I provided years of social media content & community engagement on DiRT Rally 2.0, keeping core fans interested in the game right up until EA SPORTS WRC's reveal, ensuring the new title had a passionate fanbase from Day 1.
This rebrand took on two distinct phases, going from @DiRTgame to @EASPORTSRally in 2022 before then becoming @EASPORTSWRC in 2023.
EA SPORTS Rally Team
Following the success of the Codemasters DiRT Rally Team in 2021, the team was rebranded to strengthen the bond between Electronic Arts (who acquired Codemasters in 2021) & the World Rally Championship, while also serving as a test-bed for social media content in the year leading up to EA SPORTS WRC's reveal.
For the 2022 FIA Junior WRC season, Jon Armstrong was the team's driver while also being a Game Designer on EA SPORTS WRC. His real-world experience of professional rally driving fed back into the development of the game, ensuring it would be the most authentic representation of the sport possible upon release.
I handled the social media execution of the team & also the rebrand from @DiRTgame to @EASPORTSRally, building relationships with various partners which would then be expanded upon for EA SPORTS WRC's reveal & campaign.
Social Media & Community Management
As the person within EA with the most experience & knowledge of rally games & the DiRT Rally community, I was ideally-suited to the role of Social Media & Community Manager for EA SPORTS WRC.
Leveraging my years of experience on DiRT Rally 2.0 as both a communications expert & high-level player of the game, my communication efforts ensured that players were suitable informed & excited about the impending release.
I handled everything from devising & executing the social media calendar to writing blog posts & patch notes, developing the scripts for our Deep Dive video series, creating in-game events for up to 100,000 players & much more.
As the bridge between the development studio, publishing team & the players, I was widely praised both internally & externally for my work on the series.
Social Graphics
In addition to delivering assets created by the wider teams at Electronic Arts, I created several images of my own during both the pre & post-launch phases of the game.
Utilising my deep understanding of gaming communities to identify player preferences, trends & concerns, I identified several content opportunities to round out the game's social media & community engagement strategy.
One notable example were vehicle tuning setups, in which I provided tangible value to players by helping them build a greater understanding of the cars they were driving, in order to improve their in-game performance & enjoyment.
Throughout 2024 I created & developed a content series in partnership with Skoda Motorsport in which their race engineers created setups for players to enjoy in-game.
Official & Partner Clubs
In addition to the game's external communications, I also played a key role in the success of one of the game's core features, Clubs.
Clubs is a game mode in which players can create custom championships in which they can compete against friends & rivals across the world. It is powered by EA Racenet, a companion app for the game.
In addition to assisting with the development of the feature pre-launch by providing feedback on the elements that players would use & like to see, I ran all 4 of the game's Official Clubs, with almost 100,000 players signing up to compete in the events I created.
I also provided players & partners with official documentation on how to use the Clubs feature to create their own events, allowing brands & personalities such as Skoda Motorsport, the British Rally Championship, Oliver Solberg & more to host their own esports & community events for thousands of fans.
User-Generated Content
EA SPORTS WRC's passionate & vibrant community of rally fans formed the foundation of my social media & community management strategies for the game, with the best example of this coming from how I leveraged their talents to directly contribute to the game's social output.
Through the game's Photo Mode tools, players were able to express themselves in a myriad of ways, while also showing off the fine work done by the game's development team on over 100 cars, 20 countries & 700km of unique roads, the largest content collection ever seen in a rally game.
Community photography was used throughout the entire post-launch phase of the game, both to celebrate rally's rich history & to increase engagement with the game's features, such as Clubs.
Throughout this time I also worked with the EA SPORTS Creator Series, an independent collection of racing game content creators who host competitive events. In addition to guiding them on how to make their events successful, I facilitated multiple livestreams on the game's official YouTube channel, highlighting their talent & passion for the sport.
