The Power of Fan Community

Hi Everybody, Pavel here, reporting about my trip to Scania truck plant in the city of Södertälje, Sweden, this weekend.

It was a fun trip, seeing all the gorgeous trucks during an Open Day event in the factory, and watching the final round of Scania Young European Truck Driver competition. (Check out the replay of the finals and admire the skill required of a real truck driver! http://scania-yetd.creo.tv/150425/scania_yetd_final_event_2015)

It was a visit I would no doubt consider worth covering here on the blog, but this alone may not make me write a blog post on a Sunday evening.

I've had a real eye opening moment this weekend, realizing how much we depend on the fan community to have cool things happening to our company and to our games...

Here is the latest example: There is a young man living in Södertälje who is a huge fan of a certain youtuber and streamer known as Squirrel, and as it also happens of Euro Truck Simulator 2. This young man, let's call him Kilian, was the catalyst who put in motion a series of events which ended up in Scania's marketing department issuing official invitation for Squirrel to come to the YETD finals to show his skill driving Scania trucks in our game (and actually driving real trucks at Scania Demo Centre!). Things snowballed from there, our Scandinavian publishing partner Wendros offered to help and show the game at the event - big thanks Johan for all the hard work! - and I was invited to come and help present the new Scandinavia DLC. As a result, hundreds of visitors of the event, adults as well as kids, got a chance to sit behind the steering wheel - also thanks to John at Nordic office of Logitech who donated five brand new G27 wheels - and to try out the new map add-on in a world premiere in the public.

I've heard a lot of praise as well as some constructive critique about what we were showing, admittedly it was a bit of an ego-booster experience, but there was more happening that none of us really expected.

Crowds were pouring in to see the game and to meet Paul in the flesh. The announcement of his visit to Scania on his YouTube channel attracted fans from as far as Switzerland, Germany or Ireland, not to speak about a ton of his Swedish fans. There was a queue that lasted like 2 hours of people asking for an autograph or selfie together with Squirrel, numerous people even bringing presents for him for his upcoming birthday.

I was wondering, is it really possible that something as trivial as a computer game can be so powerful to induce so much emotion, to create friendships, to spark new businesses, to change people's lives? We must have done something right to have this happening to our little Euro Truck Simulator 2!

It's definitely a strong inspiration to keep our commitment to the community, to continue improving and expanding the game. Thank you guys and gals!

If you are a fan of Squirrel or just curious what this youtube and streaming phenomenon is all about and how it can fire up the imagination of so many truck sim fans, I suggest you head to Squirrel's twitch channel immediately to watch his regular Sunday Night Trucking programme LIVE at this very moment. This time it's a special show I understand (birthday and all), and SCS has chipped in too with some very unique Steam keys for giving away in a raffle. Youtubers and streamers are a big factor contributing to continuing success of our game by attracting new players to it; there are hundreds and thousands of them out there, but Paul and his audience is really something unique.

Below are some images from my trip and from the event and the game show...