some hours watching classic movies to understand the tropes of the genre, so we could put our own twist on that and make it fun. There are so many classic 70’s and 80’s horror movies, plenty of Stephen King for example, from Carrie to The Shining - all absolutely legendary, we watched a whole stack to channel the best and then add our own twist.
WHAT WAS THE PITCH YOU DELIVERED AND HOW WAS IT RECEIVED?
Zombie games were relatively few and far between in 2006, certainly compared to the years that followed.
pushing the boundaries of media and design - through use of unique materials such as foiling, embossing and so on, for special edition packaging, or, for print advertising, through bespoke executions, such as Dead Rising’s huge extended gatefold. We had fun with the game, and we had fun pushing the boundaries of print, which had previously been a very static format, because fun was a central pillar of the brand messaging - the game’s protagonist Frank could use any item he could lay his hands on as a weapon, so we created a series of executions with him holding a variety of weapons - from It was tongue in cheek, and gamers and media loved that. Our messaging extended across all touchpoints - our merch featured a cheeky twist on the I LOVE T-shirt format, for example.
DID YOUR RESEARCH INVOLVE WATCHING A FEW MOVIES?
Absolutely! It was the heyday of tongue-in-cheek horror, in recent years - Shaun of the Dead, of course, and 28 Days Later. While the game wasn’t hard horror, we put in
The brief focused on a few key themes - the hordes and hordes of zombies - through the cutting edge swarm tech - which the Xbox 360 facilitated; the shopping mall setting, and the freedom of choice Frank had with regards to his weaponry. Honestly, it was one of those pitches where we knew exactly things could look from the get go. We mocked up our ideas for the creative, and the pitch idea - key art, print ads, T shirts, special edition packaging, standard packaging etc, and got the immediate green light.
WAS THERE ANYTHING THAT CAPCOM WERE UNCOMFORTABLE ABOUT? (AS IN, PERHAPS GOING “FULL DAWN OF THE DEAD” IN LIGHT OF THE LEGAL ACTION THAT WAS TO FOLLOW.) Capcom were completely happy with the campaign - the Dawn of the Dead challenge was of course dismissed - but we did have an unexpected wrangle with Birmingham City Council. The campaign itself was shot in Birmingham’s Bull Ring - of course we applied for the necessary legal permissions prior to our shoot, and all our paperwork was in order. We shot the campaign, which subsequently went live, but Birmingham City Council then asked that the campaign be pulled - on the basis that it painted the mall and city in a bad light by insinuating that Birmingham was full of zombies! Once we pointed out that they’d already given permission and all our legal ducks were in a row, they dropped their claim.
Dead Rising was clearly inspired by Dawn of the Dead, to the degree that the owners of the movie property took Capcom (and others) to court claiming copyright infringement.
48 | MCV/DEVELOP April/May 2024
HOW DID YOU GO FROM PITCH TO PLAN, TO PUTTING THE PLAN INTO ACTION? WHAT WERE THE MILESTONES? We had hard deadlines to meet for the packaging, as long lead times were required for production of physical games for retail, and similarly long lead times for special editions in print media. Multiple rounds of approval were required from each stakeholder client side, so production schedules
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