Injustice Heroes And Villains Keep Brawling

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Injustice Battle Arena, the campaign developed by Ayzenberg for Warner Bros.’ brawler Injustice: Gods Among Us, is chugging along.  Or more like slugging along.  It just wrapped up a new round of bouts with a superhero match between Shazam! and The Flash, and a supervillain one pitting the Joker against Lex Luthor.

Here are the results.

 

Exclusive: Blake Griffin, Writer Rumble Pave Future For GameFly

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It may be some time before GameFly gets out of its core business of renting games by mail, but it has paved the way for the move into digital.  The company acquired Direct2Drive in 2011 from IGN, turning it into its own PC download service called Ultimate PC Play. The service operates like any game digital download site, Steam for instance, with one added bonus.  GameFly subscribers get access to unlimited play for select games, basically the digital version of rental.  GameFly won’t say how many customers it has, but it has been building a subscriber base for ten years.  Ultimate PC Play is meant to keep them loyal to GameFly even as they join the increasing number of console gamers working digital games into their habit.

That thinking extends to the second front in GameFly’s digital strategy – game publishing.  The company unexpectedly announced its move into publishing late last year with a mobile game called Writer Rumble.  Even more unexpected was the kind of game they signed to launch the effort.  One might have expected an action or shooting game targeting console gamers, or perhaps something loosely tied to the brand.  Paper Boy comes to mind for the latter.  Writer Rumble is a word puzzle game that turns seriously classic (and seriously serious) writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Agatha Christie and H.P. Lovecraft into brawling cartoon characters.

We spoke with GameFly co-founder and senior VP Sean Spector on the company’s digital strategy.  We also got him talking about the decision to sign NBA superstar Blake Griffin, part of their shift in TV campaign strategy from service and customer centric messaging to celebrity spokesperson spots.

 

Escape For Some Alien Family Fun

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The 3D animated family comedy Escape From Planet Earth catapults movie goers to planet Baab where admired astronaut Scorch Supernova is a national hero to the blue alien population. A master of daring rescues, Scorch pulls off astonishing feats with the quiet aid of his nerdy, by-the-rules brother, Gary, head of mission control at BASA. When BASA’ no-nonsense chief Lena (Alba) informs the brothers of an SOS from a notoriously dangerous planet, Scorch rejects Gary’s warnings and bounds off for yet another exciting mission. But when Scorch finds himself caught in a fiendish trap set by the evil Shanker (Gandolfini), it’s up to scrawny, risk-adverse Gary to do the real rescuing. As the interplanetary stakes rise to new heights, Gary is left to save his brother, his planet, his beloved wife Kira (Parker) and their adventure hungry son Kip!

On the official website, fans can choose from multiple engagements.

Gnarlach Rescue is a platform game where alien babies must be rescued from the Gnarlachs!

 

 

Additional engagements include a top down strategy game and an alien welcome kit where fans can learn a little bit more about this strange place we call Earth.

 

 

 

 

Deadpool Offers Some Love

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Much to our surprise, we received an email from Deadpool on Valentine’s Day. The email said in full: “Deadpool here, personally wishing you a ‘lucky’ (if you know what we mean) (it’s pretty obvious champ) Valentine’s Day. My loyal minions at High Moon Studios would wish you the same, but they have a video game to work on.”

Then he included this image:

 

Rovio Hires To Make Angry Birds An Advertising Destination

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Rovio has announced that it has hired Betsy Flounders Novak as the company’s director of the West and Midwest. The veteran of MTV and ESPN will be joined in America by Matt Pfeffer who will be director of the East Coast, leaving a position at the mobile ad company Millennial Media.

“The model of simply placing standard display ads in online and mobile properties is not necessarily strategic for the majority of tier one brands, and that model was in need of disruption,” said Michele Tobin, head of North American brand advertising partnerships. “Rover’s fan-first approach and engaged audience creates more native, integrated advertising experiences that more closely align to brands’ overall marketing goals.”

Rovio has also hired Todd Tran as head of the European and Asia Pacific brand partnership ad team. The former EMEA general manager of Apple’s mobile advertising business will be joined by Nokia and inMobi veteran Raphaelle Tripet.

“Brands and agencies in Europe and Asia want to work directly with scalable, next generation media companies, in unique ways,” said Tran. “As a media platform, we have now achieved tier-one global reach and we have an opportunity to really pioneer true integrated cross platform brand experiences.”

Rovio says these hires will help the company as it transitions to focusing on digital advertising. The company says that Angry Birds has become an appealing advertising target for other brands now that it has over 263 million MAUs as of December 2012.

Minecraft Opening New Markets With Pre-Paid Cards

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Mojang CEO Carl Manneh noted that pre-paid cards have been huge for Minecraft, helping to quadruple sales of the game in the U.S. after they became available at Walmart, Target, Best Buy and GameStop. It has allowed the company to reach younger consumers with interest in the game but no credit cards and accounted for half of the game’s sales late in the year.

“We had a hard time believing those figures,” said Manneh. “It was such a come back from the previous months. Markus [Persson] was on holiday in Thailand, and he and I sent text messages back and forward every day. We were so amazed.”

In the future, pre-paid cards will help Minecraft expand in regions like Brazil and Japan. “The prepaid cards will not cannibalize the rest of our sales,” said Manneh. “Instead, we reach new groups of costumers with other consumption habits.”

Source: GamesIndustry International

Angry Birds Trilogy Sells 1 Million Copies

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Angry Birds Trilogy has sold over 1 million units across Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and 3DS worldwide. The compilation of Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio will be coming to Wii U later in 2013.

“It was certainly satisfying to see Angry Birds gameplay adapt so well to other platforms in 2012,” said Rovio’s EVP of games, Petri Jarvilehto. “The features specific to the Wii U are very intriguing to us, so we’re excited to release this version to fans.”

Video Game High School Raises Over $800k On Kickstarter

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Freddie Wong, Brandon Laatsch and Matt Arnold raised $808,341 from more than 10,000 backers to fund their second season of Video Game High School. This amount is a record for a film project on Kickstarter.

The record amount is nearly double the amount raised by the two most successful campaigns for a film or video project: Blur Studio’s The Goon and Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa. The goal for the project was $636,010, which they estimated as the cost for season one.

“Kickstarter has shifted from funding creative projects to funding products and video games; the biggest funded are consumer electronics and video game projects,” said Wong. “So we’re very happy it can support us in this way. Not only do we have direct access to an audience in terms of being able to get feedback, but direct access in terms of being able to have projects funded so we can try and take some of the risk out of film production.”

The first season of Video Game High School attracted 50 million viewers last summer between YouTube and RocketJump.com. Most of the money the campaign raised will be used on production, with filming already underway for Season Two both on location and using YouTube’s new studio space in Los Angeles; sponsors like Dodge will also help offset some of the costs.

Wong indicates that this second season will pull back a little bit and show more of the dynamics of the school and its competition with other schools. While the first season was one primary story arch spread out over 10 episodes that are10-to-20 minutes apiece, this season will consist of six TV-length episodes ranging from 22 to 25 minutes.

“In the time we had been shooting season one, people’s tolerance of longer-form narrative online went up significantly,” Wong said. “Everyone loved the last episode of season one, which was 22 minutes long. We wanted to open it up, explore B plot and side characters.”

As with any Kickstarter, a decent amount of the funding will go to rewarding the contributors. For instance, anyone that gave $2,500 will have Wong showing up on their doorstep to deliver them donuts.

“The first priority is to go to reward people,” Wong said. “Whatever the pledge, we have to make sure people get that.”

Source: TheWrap.com