The clever part of that marketing is that they created special in-game assets for specific streamers, in the form of headgear for heroes. For example for one streamer with 300k followers, who is using a pirate theme for his stream, they created a pirate hat, so he could make a main hero in the game that looks like him. These headgear items can then be distributed by those streamers via the Twitch Drops system, so people who follow a specific streamer can get that streamer-specific item in game as well. I call that clever, because it is another source of motivation for the streamer beyond just money.

But there are also not-so-clever parts in that influencer marketing. One is a rather strict schedule at what date the streamer has to show what in their stream. They all showed the character and faction generation part of the game on March 2nd, and gameplay streams on the weekends of April 22nd and April 29th. So instead of getting a steady stream of content over some time, all the selected influencers publish similar content at the same dates. And in some cases that clearly doesn't fit into their own schedules, so I've seen the AoW4 content seen attached to the end of a stream for a different game.

The other problem is that complex strategy games are a niche in the general videogaming sphere. So Paradox got a mix of streamers, some dedicated to this sort of strategy games, and some not normally playing deep strategy games. I watched some streams in which somebody clearly not used to strategy games, and not having taken the time to play some hours in advance for preparation, discovers Age of Wonders 4 gameplay for the first time on stream, and is visibly struggling and confused. That isn't great advertising. But it is the nature of streamer marketing that the company paying for it sees the result at the same time as the public. If a stream is bad, it is already too late to pull the plug. Some people will always be more interested in a particular game, or put in more effort out of professionality; others will just take the money offered and do the required minimum.

Obviously in 2023 nobody would even dream of marketing a video game via blogs. But I preordered Age of Wonders 4 and thus will be able to play it next week. You can expect one or more blog posts on Age of Wonders 4 from me during the month of May. But even I would recommend that if you are interested in that game now, look for recent gameplay videos of it on YouTube.