Connected Gaming Week - May 18, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go! Meet Director Mark Van Lommel

by Wonacott Communications

We Wonawelcome the newest addition to the Wonacott Communications team: Mark Van Lommel, a video games PR nerd veteran with nearly 10 years of experience in the industry.

Connected Gaming Week - May 11, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Connected Gaming Week - May 4, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Greetings everyone! Let me introduce you to the next evolution of Wonacott Communications with the new Connected Gaming Week. For those of you who visited our website or offices recently, you'll notice that Wonacott underwent a complete redesign to reflect our five years of progress in interactive entertainment, social and corporate communications. With the advent of cross-platform play from browsers and mobile phones, it was time to bring the Online Entertainment Insider to the next level, so we give you: Connected Gaming Week. Please be sure to add cgw@wonacottpr.com to your safe lists - we'll be using that address starting next week.

Jason Wonacott Talking F2P Marketing at Casual Connect Asia

by Wonacott Communications

If you happen to be traversing Southeast Asia later this month, stop by Casual Connect Asia, May 22-24. Our own Jason Wonacott will be there for a session on stretching F2P game marketing dollars. Alongside his industry peeps from iQU, SEA Gaming and BBC Worldwide, Jason will moderate the panel, which will address building new user bases in today’s rapidly evolving  global games market.

Online Entertainment Insider - April 27, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Online Entertainment Insider - April 20, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

The rule of threes is in full-effect this weekend. For those that have been patiently waiting to once again slaughter the armies of hell, Blizzard is holding an open beta weekend right now for Diablo III prior to the game's May 15 launch. The upcoming MMO from En Masse, Tera Online, is also having a public weekend, and capping off the trifecta is WarGaming.net, which just sent out a much larger round of invites for the World of Warplanes global alpha.

Online Entertainment Insider - April 13, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

The past few editions of the OEI have touched upon the impending next-gen consoles. But as we all know, rumors are the most delicious part of the video game industry, and this rumor is a whopper. Valve, the company behind the highly successful Portal, Half-life and Team Fortress series, are looking for console hardware engineers. What that means for Valve and the 30-million plus users of its Steam digital distribution platform isn’t clear, but a new challenger for the console wars would certainly shake up the industry. 

Online Entertainment Insider - April 6, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Happy Good Friday, everyone - we hope you're having an indulgent day, now that Lent is over! What else does Good Friday mean? It's the last full week you'll have to wait to check out Skullgirls, the new 2D fighting game on XBLA and PSN. Skullgirls publisher Autumn Games is a Wonacott client, and after a year-long campaign, we think the game is poised to upset the old guard of fighting games with a fresh take on the genre. 

Online Entertainment Insider - March 30, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Console wars are an inexorable part of the video game industry, and are the front lines of billions of dollars in revenue. NES, Sega and Turbografx fought the bloodiest battle back in the early '90s, but now console makers, specifically Sony (for now), seem to be taking the war to second-hand retailers with the rumor that the next PlayStation console will NOT support used games. The largest used game retailer in the world generates more than $2 billion annually from reselling, which is a very large piece of pie to fight over...

Online Entertainment Insider - March 9, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Greetings from the Game Developers Conference show floor! We’re wrapping up the last day here and hope that if you attended you had a great time. There was definitely some great news coming out of GDC, but I’m pretty sure all of it was overshadowed by Angry Birds Space.

International Women’s Day: Commentary from The Women of Wonacott Communications

by Wonacott Communications

Today is International Women’s Day, which serves as an important reminder of the many inspirational women in our lives. It’s because of them that we are driven – and in some cases, even afforded the ability – to chase our dreams in the pursuit of our own happiness, so we think today is the ideal opportunity to highlight some of the women who are paving (or have paved) the way for us.

Online Entertainment Insider - March 2, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

With our new site update and corporate identity (have you checked it out yet? I’ll wait…) we decided to breathe some new life into the Online Entertainment Insider. Jason passed the newsletter torch to me, Alex Josef, vice president of the interactive entertainment practice here at Wonacott!

Online Entertainment Insider - Feb. 24, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

CD Projekt Red, publisher of the Witcher series, is an anomaly in the games industry when it comes to its stance on digital rights management, or DRM. After announcing that they sold 1.5 million copies last year, they put out the statistic that there are approximately 4.5 million pirated copies. And they don’t care. They take the opinion that counter-piracy measures wind up only hurting loyal gamers; so instead, they work on improving the quality. A pretty novel suggestion, don’t you think? 

Online Entertainment Insider - Feb. 17, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Red Sox fans, and I know you’re out there, we have a lot to be upset about as famous knuckleballer Tim Wakefield is on the verge of retiring. But there could be life after baseball for him – he could join up with retired Red Sox pitcher Curt Shilling’s game company, 38 Studios and help promote its new release – Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Maybe Tim can be a marketing coordinator or something.

Online Entertainment Insider - Feb. 10, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Everyone remembers the classic Milton-Bradley board game, Battleship, right? Did you know Hollywood decided to turn it into your movie? Yes? Well, Activision just announced this week it was turning the movie about the board game into a first person shooter. Really? I’ll repeat that. REALLY?!

Online Entertainment Insider - Feb. 3, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Happy post-Groundhog day, everyone! I hope that if you were stuck in a 10,000 year loop yesterday, that everything turned out for the best and you haven’t been permanently scarred by a Sonny and Cher tune.
 

Death Lives in San Francisco

by Wonacott Communications

Last week, Wonacott went up to San Francisco to staff an event for the upcoming Darksiders II. We’ve worked with THQ before – we drove the campaign for the Homefront North Korean BBQ food truck (pun intended) that caused a lot of commotion at E3 2010 and again just before the game’s launch in 2011 – and we were excited to have the chance to once again show them what we can do.

Online Entertainment Insider - Jan. 27, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Darksiders 2 held a huge preview event in San Francisco (which we helped out on!) and the game’s previews started hitting this week. The new game reveals the second Horseman of the Apocalypse, Death, and follows his story concurrently with War’s story in the original Darksiders. It’s a really interesting “Pulp Fiction”-y approach to the sequel, and is shaping up to be a franchise in its own right and not a rehash of other titles.

Virgin Gaming, Sir Richard Branson’s foray into interactive gambling, hit a huge milestone this week with 1 million registered users, and $7 million in prizes awarded to date. Virgin Gaming allows users to place wagers on matches and is partnered with publishers including EA and Take-Two, with Madden NFL ‘12 and NBA 2k12 being among the most popular titles to bet on. 

Find out more news from around the world of digital entertainment in this week’s edition of the Online Entertainment Insider, and have a great weekend!

Online Entertainment Insider - Jan. 20, 2012

by Wonacott Communications

Happy Friday, everyone! I didn’t want to get too political about SOPA, but it turns out that the legislation is spilling over into the video games industry in a big way. Since the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is still supporting the bill, Firefall Studios fought back by forming the League for Gamers (LFG) – a representative group that plans on boycotting this year’s E3 until the ESA rescinds support. We won’t know what the actual impact on E3 will be until we get closer to June, but it will be interesting to see how the politics play out.