Wanted: WOF – Maverick Hits The Studio Lot

The MavPR team is fresh back from our trip out to California (“home”) to show off the upcoming release of Wanted: Weapons of Fate to a group of online reviewers.  We had a great time taking a look behind the scenes with the Universal Pictures development team, learning more about the Wanted universe, the design inspiration, and how they got those bullets to curve so damn nicely.

We also had a delightful demo of how to sneak up on someone and stab them in their… well… places no one should be stabbed.

I love review events, especially when we have a group of development professionals who are as passionate and talented as the ones on Wanted.  People who legitimately enjoy presenting their work and talking about the intimate details and design theory they believe in, no matter how many times they are asked.

The Universal Lot Tour actually looks a lot like some of the opening levels of Wanted: Weapons of Fate

We also had a chance to spend some quality time with outlets we haven’t seen as much of lately, due to smaller/limited E3 and reduced budgets across the board.  Writers from sites like GameOver, PlanetXbox360, Kombo, Gamer 2.0, AtomicGamer, CheatCodeCentral, Digital Entertainment News, GameVortex and GamingTarget all took the time to travel out, view an offensive horror movie with us, and then dig way into Wanted: Weapons of Fate.

It’s always great — and we focus in this area a lot — to work with such a diverse group of writers from unique and independent web sites from all over North America.  And I do mean ALL OVER.  Louisiana? Alabama? Toronto? New York? Vancouver?

Oftentimes, what we find is that many video game PR reps simply do not have the time or resources to pursue coverage beyond the typical top-top tier outlets like GameSpot and IGN.  There are many reasons, from overworked PR people to executives who just want to see Trax results or worldwide exclusives. But what ends up suffering is the bottom line success of the PR outreach.

If you don’t commit to reaching beyond the usual suspects, your message is NOT reaching the hundreds-of-thousands of people who get their game info from sites without giant offices in San Francisco; sites with a staff of one, not dozens; and sites that have a camera rather than a video production facility.

We’re always really excited when a company hires us to handle this “supplemental” outreach.  Sure, we handle everyone depending on our assignment — we love you guys at the big sites too — but the importance of all outlets is often overlooked.  Finding the bandwidth to talk to everyone from GameSpot to GameOver to fan sites is a must, whether you do it or you hire someone.  A campaign without this level of outreach is lacking breadth and is not as effective as it should be.

And don’t think that there aren’t people out there who know you don’t talk to them.  They do.  They know who will answer their emails and phone calls.  They know who will and will not send them review builds.

The question is, do YOU know what you’re missing out on?

-PR_Flak