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t’s one of those facts that generally serves to make the reader feel old, but we have to get it out the way: Next year will mark 20 years since the unveiling of Dead Rising, Capcom’s open world Zombie game famous for allowing players to construct outlandish weapons with which to thin out the undead hordes. Spiked baseball bats and boomsticks among them, of course, but also saw blades attached to vacuum cleaners and  rake. These weapons weren’t just highly amusing gimmicks, they were necessary to deal with the  screen. Given that Capcom’s Resident Evil franchise was to soon head down a similarly action-packed path to much less acclaim, Dead Rising was in many ways the right game at the right time to distract attention from it.


MCV: WHAT WAS THE RELATIONSHIP LIKE WITH CAPCOM PRIOR TO WORKING ON DEAD RISING? James Glover: From the get-go we had a special working relationship with the Capcom team. Our  launch campaign for Devil May Cry, and from thereon we were creative partner for some of  Okami, Killer7, Megaman, Monster Hunter, Dead Rising, and multiple Resident Evil titles including the seminal Resident Evil 4.


Dave Corless, our day to day contact, had an incredible creative eye, and an appreciation of the power of aesthetic and design, and the cut through that would give his titles. His briefs gave us clear parameters, purpose, and direction, but he trusted us with the freedom to be creative, and so we pitched


spectacular campaigns tailored for the European market, which strengthened Capcom’s brand position as a uniquely creative publisher of exquisite and innovative games.


CAN YOU PAINT A PICTURE OF WHAT THE CAMPAIGN MARKETING LANDSCAPE WAS LIKE BACK IN 2006 WHEN DEAD RISING WAS… ER, RISING?  were in their infancy, and bricks and mortar retail was the absolute king. So each publishing region  campaigns and artwork, as the sort of global reach we see now via digital platforms was minimal, and the European market didn’t respond to US or  would be globally consistent - for example, a logo - but that might be all. For European launches, core components tended to be fairly cookie cutter - so a creative campaign would encompass key art, pack art, special editions, retail point of sale and so on, and a bigger launch might extend to include print,  ads such as banners. Creative tended to play it safe, with a lot of games in a frame-style key art, and of course graphics were a long way away from current levels so might be considered pretty basic by modern standards. Many titles with lower budgets would simply adapt US art, which often looked a little basic or crude to the European consumer. We set our campaigns apart by


April/May 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 47


The Dead Rising series would continue through four mainline games and a number of what we once called “expandalones”.


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