THE FINALISTS 2012 YOUR TEAM • YOUR GAMES • YOUR AWARDS
10th Anniversary
Previous Winners 2011: Fable III Kingmaker App
This award is for any campaign that promoted a game through social networking, video and community channels with striking creatives, strong messaging and commercial impact
BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY (WARNER BROS INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT/ ROCKSTEADY STUDIOS/
MICROSOFT) Warner Bros and Microsoft worked closely together on a campaign designed to tease and intrigue Batman fans ahead of Arkham Cityʼs arrival: Alfred At Your Service. This website, fronted by the Dark Knightʼs faithful butler, served as a working search engine and was riddled with Arkham City references and easter eggs. It racked up 195,000 views and was pushed via Twitter, Facebook and Xbox.com – Alfred even had his own Gamertag. Meanwhile, Warner and developer Rocksteady used social media to get fans involved in the debate around Arkham City, the gameʼs titular prison for supervillains.
DEAD ISLAND
(KOCH MEDIA) New IP announcements are often low-key but the makers of Dead Island bucked that trend with the gameʼs debut trailer. The video took the internet by storm in February 2011, spreading across not only specialist gaming sites but also mainstream news sources such as The Sun, The Guardian and Daily Star. To date, the original teaser trailer has been watched via YouTube more than 7.2m times – and nearly 4m of those were within the first four weeks. Buzz for the trailer spread to Twitter, where the game has been mentioned more than 6.2m times – even Shaun of the Dead actor Simon Pegg was impressed, tweeting: “This is f*cking amazing.”
JUST DANCE FACEBOOK & IOS (UBISOFT)
Ubisoft tapped into the thriving smartphone market to get consumers in the mood for Just Dance 3 with its Autodance app. This software allowed users to create music videos using short clips filmed with their phoneʼs camera. These could then be shared via the gameʼs official Facebook page. To date, UK consumers have made 6.9m Autodance videos, of which 1.4m were shared on Facebook. And Ubisoft didnʼt even have to advertise the app too heavily – the publisher claims only 50,000 of Autodanceʼs 1.3m downloads were directly attributable to ad clicks.