Relate

I always hate starting a post with “it’s been a while since we updated our blog,” but really, it’s been a while since we updated our blog!

It’s been a busy summer for us here at Relate. We’ve been traveling for a few events, as well as added a couple of new clients. Last month I was at Comic Con in San Diego for our new client cdv who is publishing the action-RPG Sacred 2. Comic Con was a blast, got to meet Michael C. Hall of Dexter fame, clothing designer and videogame publisher Marc Ecko and other VIPs, and even played model handler along with other PR duties at the show.

Lila was recently in San Francisco helping out our new client Disney Interactive with a multiplayer press event for PURE. The new action sports game on four wheels will be out next month, and we’re helping to spread the word for Disney. It’s a fun game that’s easy to pick up and play.

So what’s up next for us? PAX at the end of August is something we’re heading down to Seattle for. PAX is always a blast for us since we stay with some friends down there and we both work AND play hard while we’re there.

We’ve also got a new client to announce shortly. We’ve just finalized the deal and are waiting until we can say something publicly. Stay tuned! Gonna be an exciting 3rd and fourth quarter here at Relate!

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As we mentioned before, one of our clients, Greenwave Games, is publishing the Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm game, based on the hit Discovery TV show, Deadliest Catch. Well tomorrow we have an opportunity to visit the famous FV Northwestern, which is captained by Sig Hansen, as well as get our hands on, along with 50 Xbox MVPs, an early build of the game. And as if playing the game and viewing the boat that fans of the show will surely know and love wasn’t enough, we’re going to meet some of the crew members who appear on the show and partake in a veritable feast of the deadliest catch itself - Alaskan King Crab!

I don’t know about you, but *I* am excited, and will be sure to take lots of pictures and share them here later in the week.

Bon apetit!

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We’re excited to be working with Greenwave and Liquid Dragon Studios to announce the Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm game for Xbox 360 and PC.

In case you’ve been living under a rock over the last few years, you probably have heard of Discovery’s Deadliest Catch TV show. With nearly three million viewers each week, there’s bound to be some interest in the game — and the water looks incredible.

Captain Sig Hansen put together a little video announcement for the game and more information will be coming soon.

Three screenshots are available on our Flickr site as well.

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When I read stories like this, it makes me realize why there are smart clients out there who pay PR people who actually “get it” to reach out to the blogosphere and community outlets.

So Gridskipper, a cool urban travel guide blog (part of the Gawker network of blogs), gave a scathing little review to a product called TravelKleen on its blog, way back on March 8, 2007. Well about 11 months later, I guess the TravelKleen folks finally got around to checking these newfangled sites they call search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.), and realized that this “little blog post” is ranked in the top five search results when searching for their product. The horror!

So what did TravelKleen do? They sent off a scathing, nonsensical email to Gridskipper complaining. Let me break it down after showing you the email (and after you’ve wiped the laughter tears from your eyes and settled your belly):

From: Travelkleen Date: Feb 5, 2008 6:07 PM Subject: spam? To: tips@gridskipper.com Cc: sales@travelkleen.com

Hi

What is going on?

Your comments are distasteful.

Please remove your comments from Google, Yahoo, etc.

Thanks

TravelKleen

Excuse me if this seems elementary to our readers but I have to break it down:

1. The email makes it out like it’s not written by a human, but written by the product (or company). A bit impersonal perhaps?

2. No link to the offending article. No mention of what was wrong. It was just simply “what’s going on” and “your comments are distasteful.” Oh really? Tell us how you really feel!

3. The third line really cracks me up. I mean how dense are you? Why limit the good folks at Gridskipper to cleaning up just Google and Yahoo? Don’t you want them to contact every search engine on the Interwebs and have every reference of their article stricken from their records! Maybe the search engine companies just have them all on piles of paper stored in monstrous filing cabinets in a warehouse the size of Cleveland?

It’s really beyond me how idiotic some people can be. I guess it just illustrates why people like us have clients who value what we do and how we go about things. On the flipside, TravelKeen will probably have a bunch more hits from blogs like ours on those crazy things called search engines.

(Thanks to BrotherMagneto on Twitter for the link!)

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Well it’s a new year, and it’s shaping up to be a fun, challenging and exciting time for our company. So who you gonna call …. Ghostbusters!

*cue Ghostbusters music*

Well for starters, we’re beginning to work on some Vivendi titles, namely Ghostbusters, The Spiderwick Chronicles and a few other titles (more to be announced at a later date). We’re really pumped to be working on some of Vivendi’s hottest titles, especially since we’re going to be working with one of our former co-workers, Arne Meyer. Arne, Lila and I worked as a well-oiled machine on the Microsoft Game Studios and Xbox account while we were together at Edelman. The best part about this relationship is that Arne “gets it” when it comes to community. So we’ll be well prepared to execute some some fun, creative community tactics without so much of the corporate back-and-forth that traditionally goes on.

One of the other clients we’re working with right now is a new start-up from Seattle called Fyreball.com. I really can’t go into a lot of detail about the site at this point, but will be able to very soon. The cool thing about Fyreball is that it’s headed up by Pete Parsons, who is the former studio head of Bungie (creators of Halo, etc.). Pete and I worked together over 10 years ago on the first titles I ever did PR for Microsoft. So I’m excited to be working with him again, as well as the great team he’s assembled.

Happy New Year to all! 

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Over the holidays I’ve been reading a book called “The Waterboy,” (not to be confused by the Adam Sandler movie of the same name) written by Bobby Ackles, current president and CEO of the BC Lions football club. Ackles has a long and storied career in which he began as a waterboy for the CFL’s BC Lions in the `50s. He eventually elevated his status to the managerial ranks with the Lions originally, which then included stops along the way in the NFL and XFL before coming back to the Lions in his current capacity.

It’s a great book, but what really struck me was that Ackles really understands what it takes to get support from the community and the value placed on that support. After years of poor ticket sales, financial problems and business crises, Ackles realized he needed to get the players into the community. In his book he sums it up best with this quote:

It taught me a lot about community marketing - you’ve got to get out, get involved and support others if you want people to support you.

Now there’s someone who gets it! We’ve been preaching this gospel for a while now in the videogame space and it’s nice to see high profile individuals like Bob Ackles who also understands this concept.

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Today, the expansion pack for Guild Wars went live at 12:01 a.m. It’s 10:30 am here, and I’m still nowhere near level 20 in Guild Wars. For those of you who do have level 20 characters, this expansion is what Guild Wars players have been waiting for. I know I sound like a fanboy, and we are doing PR for the title, but I’m simply amazed at how gorgeous the game can look with a 2+ year old engine! Must.get.to.level.20!

Hit the jump below for the full press release if you’re interested in knowing more.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Wow! Am I ever exhausted. This weekend, Lila and I were at PAX working in the Arena Net/NCsoft booth. Even though we had an amazing time, it sure seemed to hit me this morning waking up. Man, were we both ever tired!

While obviously our goal at a show such as this is to generate as much publicity and buzz for our titles, Tabula Rasa and Guild Wars: Eye of the North, when the press visit our booth. I think we achieved much of that, but Lila and I both agree that the thing we love most about these shows is meeting people.

In the online space, we often build relationships through email, IM, Twitter and phone, but sometimes we never meet these people in person. Sometimes it’s only at a show such as this where we actually get to meet these folks. Of course it’s also an opportunity to reconnect with friends in the industry — editors, colleagues and just plain ole gamers.

During the show I got to meet one editor with whom I’ve been working with for years, but never met in person. I also got to meet many of the Xbox community bloggers and podcasters who we used to work with when we were doing PR for Microsoft. The great thing is that even though we are doing PR for PC titles at the moment, we still have a great relationship and even friendship with many of these editors.

Related to PAX, during the show we were giving away Tabula Rasa beta codes, and I managed to find a couple of extras left when I was unpacking my stuff this morning. I’d love to give them out to the first two people who comment requesting a beta code. Just make sure you leave me a working email.

Now I must rest. Even Master Chief wore me down!

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Yeah Kelly and I talk a lot, not that it’s a bad thing (Ophelea from GamersInfo.net).

This morning we talked about handling the press, SOE and Chopra/Branson’s MMO, ComicCon and Papaya Studio’s Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey.

Kelly mentioned that she noticed something this year, more so than any other year, about ComicCon: how disabled-friendly it was. She informed me that they had 2-4 seats/row in most of the panels and they even had an ASL (no this does not stand for Age Sex Location, it stands for American Sign Language) interpreter on hand.

We went on to discuss about how we both wish more developers would look at making some of their games more disabled-friendly and talked about adding labels to game boxes that indicate how disabled-friendly it is. In the end it is usually the consumer who has to find an alternate method to play and enjoy the game s/he likes.

Once a Princess, always a Princess 

Kelly also mentioned to me this morning that she received an email from Lin a developer from Papaya Studios to thank her for giving their game a fair preview at E3 this year. As soon as she said Disney Princess, I quickly went to her preview to see what it was about.

In the email that Lin sent to Kelly, she mentioned only a few editors previewed the game as a game for young children who are not old enough to read and who don’t have much patience. Lin also mentioned that they observed, studied and even did a lot of focus testing to design the game to meet their understanding level. They even made the control system easy and intuitive for 3-5 year olds.

That’s all fine and dandy you’re probably thinking…and you’re probably wondering why I am even writing about this game. It’s not like I’m going to play it or anything. Well I am.  I’m going to pick it up for my nieces and play it with them. Either the Wii or the PS2, I haven’t decided yet. Being the Aunt of two young girls ages three- five, I thought Disney Princess would be perfect for Hailee and Ione- especially since they are both Princess fanatics.

Being the PR-ly person that I am, I quickly googled the game and found a good amount of coverage for the game which is great. What I also found was that some of the “hardcore” gaming press who covered it just made fun of it. Which makes bunny cry.  I guess any coverage is good coverage.

As a parent, it pains me to see that these types of titles often don’t get the same lovin’ that the Halo’s and GTA’s of the world get by the gaming press (or even mainstream press). I think the following sites would have been good targets to reach out to for this product. They have an understanding of their younger audience and a good number of the sites have editors who are parents and would give Enchanted Journey a fair chance.

• Andrew Bub’s team at Gamer Dad

• Kaboose

• KidZ World

• KOL (Kids AOL)

• Grrl Gamer

• Killer Betties

• Kiwi Box

• Toon Zone

• Edutaining Kids

(And for the record, Disney and Papaya are not clients of Relate PR)

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I’ve played around with Pownce a bit, and it has some promise. I’m just not convinced that it will knock the first app to the party, Twitter, off it’s throne yet. It’s got a nice little AIR app, but I really like my Twitbin app for Firefox much better. Also, most of my friends from Twitter are on Pownce now, but nobody is using it. They’re just using twitter.

I also like the fact that I have a Wordpress plugin that automatically notifies my twitter friends of new blog posts. When is Pownce going to release an API?

At any rate, I do have some Pownce invites available. If you’re interested in trying it out, drop me an email at steve AT relatepr.com. 

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