One of the most interesting aspects of entertainment (which I’m lumping games, movies, comics, etc. under) is the cosplay community that’s arisen around it. From younglings to grownups, fans of differing mediums have taken to heart their favorite characters and brought them to life in their own ways. Sometimes you have cosplayers like Jessica Nigri, who tends to put her own spin on a characters, and on the other end of the spectrum you have Anne Torstense, the Norwegian cosplayer known as Ibelinn Cosplay who embodies that character in an unimaginable way.

Frankly at times, I’ve seen cosplayers build something better than what companies themselves might create in order to promote their given movie/game/comic which goes to show that throwing money at something is often not the solution. In the case of Aloy, the heroine from Horizon: Zero Dawn, Anne has brought her to life in a way I didn’t think was possible but from the business perspective of it, it’s also fascinating to see PlayStation actively promoting her content as you’ll see from the video below.

If you haven’t already, make sure you follow Anne in all the appropriate places like Facebook and Twitter, where I’d coincidentally run into her stuff a long time ago, so it’s fantastic to see her get the kind of attention her talent deserves. As I mentioned above, there is also a business twist to all this. As Anne points out in the video, Guerrilla Games very early on recognized the cosplay community as an important group to target and released detailed character designs shortly after the game’s reveal.

Traditional advertisement hasn’t changed much in the last few decades: bombard the given and appropriate platforms with ads about whatever it is that you’re selling. From there, the medium has evolved, newspaper > radio > TV > online, but the mindset has been the same. It’s the companies who create the material to promote. With the birth of social media and the cosplay culture that has thrived because of it, fans like Anne are taking these characters and bringing them to life in an authentic and natural way that Guerrilla Games can never achieve on their own.

At the same time, Anne is a walking advertisement for Horizon which leaves GG with two choices — either ignore this growing medium or help nurture it from the beginning by putting out material that’s helpful to that community which in turn is able to put out the incredible work that you see. I’m sure you’ve already to one degree or another heard ad nauseam about influencers and brands wanting to work with them and this is a clear example of a healthy partnership where Anne is able to pursue and put her passion to use and GG gets a very complex and walking billboard for their game. Both sides win and neither side is left with awkward content where it’s clear that one side is paying the other to push something they may or may not believe in.

Kudos to PlayStation for supporting a community that clearly is passionate about them and much respect to cosplayers like Anne who pour weeks and months into pieces like this that many times don’t get the same recognition.

Photos by Katrix Media Site