Film director Sam Raimi says Saving Private Ryan writer Robert Rodat is attached to his upcoming film based on World of Warcraft. Raimi mentioned Rodat in comments he made to MTV News about the film’s story, adding that the writer is creating an original storyline.
Read more at MTV News.
Publisher 2K Games is deploying a multi-faceted PR campaign for Bioshock 2 that expands the game fiction into reality for game press and hardcore fans. The game is developer 2K Boston’s sequel to the 2007 shooter that made waves for great game play and a stylistic steam punk premise.
Reported by Adweek, one phase of the campaign had 2K marketers planting bottles with promotional posters on beaches, depicting them as wine bottles washed ashore from the game’s undersea city setting Rapture. With the help of game press they were able to get the word out on where fans could go look for the bottles. Some ended up on eBay, which AdFreak points out resulted in more press coverage and PR impressions. More recently, delivery men dressed up as coming from Rapture set the stage for a mysterious gift item for game community writers. The gifts were custom crafted trinkets from the game.
Read more at AdFreak.
That YouTube video looking link spammed to you might not be a virus after all. Internet security provider Kaspersky Labs is monitoring mass emailing of YouTube video links by spammers, reports NY Times.
The trend of using YouTube s popular and free service to bulk market through the web is one that Kaspersky had predicted two years ago. They expect it to continue spreading, and they think YouTube should be troubled by it. YouTube’s automated system for tracking down illegal posts is designed only for licensed content. The tool works by searching for digital fingerprints between videos to pinpoint if a user video is identical to a piece of licensed content in their library. The system wouldn’t be able to track down new videos, even if they are as blatantly spam-ish as the one NY Times received selling Russian industrial real estate.
Read more at NY Times.
Research is showing steady spending on search ads even as the rest of the ad sector contracted this year, reports NY Times. Two research reports show little or no decline in search ad spends year over year, with growth in the five to ten percent range compared to last quarter. The trend isn’t just benefiting Google, it’s helping Microsoft’s Bing maintain traction.
According to the article, Google gets about 71 percent of search ad revenues. Bing s share is relatively small but gaining. Researcher Efficient Frontier saw Bing s share of ad revenue grow by more than a fifth to 5.3 percent in the third quarter. On the user side, it tracked 17 percent more clicks on Bing in the same quarter. Another report by Search Ignite looked at revenue share compared to last year. It found Bing share grew by 15 percent and Google by 5 percent, while Yahoo saw a 25 percent drop.
Read more at NY Times.
Early game video leaks laying bare rough visuals, early game play and other development warts can be disastrous. If the game’s not in development, at least it gets you back in the press. Game sites including 1up are showing two videos of games that were cancelled when their studios were shuttered.
It turns out now-closed EA Warrington had been working on a remake of the classic motorcycle racer Road Rash. A video labeled Road Rash Raging Pre-vis surfaced over the weekend, showing game play very much inspired by the original.
Another shuttered studio, BottleRocket, had been working on an unannounced game when Namco Bandai very publicly took away their core project Splatterhouse. While 1up reports rumors had circled about the studio working on a superhero Flash game, a video posted on YouTube by a member with the handle misterbigmouth confirms it.
Check out the Road Rash video here at 1up {link no longer active}.
Check out BottleRocket’s Flash video here at 1up {link no longer active}.
Sharp-eyed members of game community site NeoGAF may have pulled the veil on Sony’s expected but not yet announced sequel to hit PS3 shooter Resistance. Picked up by 1up, the photos show a roadside billboard depicting the logo Resistance 3 taken at a Louisiana film set. The filming is reported to be for the upcoming action movie Battle: Los Angeles being produced by Sony owned Columbia Pictures.
The even sharper eyed 1up has noticed that the logo has a New York City backdrop, hinting to the sequel’s setting.
Read more at 1up {link no longer active}.
Writing for Adweek, Brian Morrissey looks at how major brands are faring on Facebook for eight product categories. He looks at number of fans on each brand’s Facebook page and what they’re doing to draw and engage them. Morrisey then picks a winning brand and one that’s missing an opportunity for each category in consumer goods, retail, food, tech, apparel, insurance, automotive and airline.
Read more at Adweek {link no longer active}.
An exclusively viral campaign for horror film Paranormal Activity is paying off. Reported throughout the media today is the story behind Paramount’s marketing of the meagerly budgeted independent film. The studio is moving to expand the film into 46 markets after making a half-million dollars in one weekend in just 12 markets, reports Ad Age.
The $10,000-15,000 budgeted film first got attention at the 2008 Slamdance festival. It had Steven Spielberg considering remaking a big-budget version. Purchaser Paramount ultimately decided to market the film in the mold of Blair Witch Project and anchored their campaign to an events promotion service called Eventful. Eventful lets people track entertainment events around the world and vote for which ones they wish would play locally. It’s been a popular promotional tool for musicians and event venues, and it offers various tools for both tracking events and spreading the word through social media sites. Nearly a million votes were cast for Paranormal Activity at Eventful s site and the film became a trending topic on Twitter. At the time of this post the film has a banner on Eventful’s front page displaying a demand it button.
The film’s campaign hasn’t just been a boost to Paramount s strategy, it s also an indication of the power and potential audience size that Eventful can serve. Ad Age talks to Paramount marketing executives and the head of Eventful, drawing four lessons from how Paranormal Activity is being marketed.
Read more at Ad Age {link no longer active}.
While clocks won t be rolling back just yet, Rocktober officially starts this week as Tim Schafer’s heavy metal laced action game Brutal Legend hits 360 and PS3. Sony is also gearing up for a big week with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves for PS3.
Check out the full list at Shack News {link no longer active}.
Blog site Just Push Start has got the rumor mill going about a PS3 version of Mass Effect 2, the much-anticipated sequel to Bioware’s RPG. The site first noticed a listing for the PS3 game on Australia retailer web site GAME. It then tracked down another listing for the game on the site for EA Russia.
Read more at Just Push Start.
