Bloober Team at GDC

Krakow, Poland – 4 March 2010 – Games developer and publisher Bloober Team, most famous for its WiiWare super production Last Flight and  post-apocalyptic tactic game for iPad – Gender Wars: The Battle – wants to seize the opportunity of massive gaming community concentration during GDC and organizes marketing research to test their upcoming games.

“Although many people in the games industry talk about hearing gamers’ voices they rarely actually do it” complains Piotr Babieno, producer of Last Flight. “We want to change that. We will hear all gamers comments through professional marketing research organized by external company Fieldwork that specializes in researches performed on the site” he explains.

Bloober Team believes that large gamers gatherings like GDC are not only great opportunities for developers to educate their staff or develop business relations but also to actually improve their games. “We want to use knowledge of GDC attendees to point out what could be improved in our productions” says Peter Bielatowicz, Gender Wars lead designer. “We want to actually give early alpha versions of our productions to play to the randomly selected players and hear what they think. And with consoles productions this is technically possible only during massive shows like GDC” he adds.

Qualitative marketing research and Projective Techniques

The studio plans to use qualitative research forms such as focus groups and IDIs (Individual in-Depth Interviews) depending on the tested game and scope of the research. “We will try to provoke vivid discussion by leveraging group dynamics in focus groups as much as possible” says Joanna Bochenek, research program coordinator from Fieldwork. “But we plan to use projective techniques during IDIs to learn what gamers truly thing about certain aspects of our game, such as its presentation, gameplay or storyline” she adds.

“Of course we don’t limit our attendance to show only to this research” states Piotr Babieno. Everyone from the press or industry that will want to meet with Bloober Team can contact them directly to arrange a meeting. “Our schedule is filling pretty fast but since we have very strong delegation this year surely someone from it will find time for quick conversation. So please don’t hesitate to simply inquiry about free slots” Piotr advices.

Recruitment from gamers

Bloober Team and Fieldwork wants to use open recruitment and invite any GDC participant – or San Francisco based gamer – that will volunteer to participate in the research. The research will take place between 9th and 14th March in San Francisco.

Anyone willing to participate shall e-mail organizers at research@blooberteam.com and give the following data: gender, age, if the person is professionally connected with game industry or not, and ays during which he would be willing to participate in research. Organizers seeks for both professionals and casual gamers.

“We will contact each volunteer and set the details individually” says Joanna Bochenek. The interviews will take about 1,5-2,5 hours total (including testing time). “We also prepared some gifts that will be handed over to participants after research” Joanna adds.

“Personally, I hope that this research will not only help us to improve games but also will be another great community meeting that will result in new contacts and friendships afterwards for everyone who will participate” ends Bielatowicz.

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About Last Flight

Last Flight is an action-adventure horror that makes use of Wii unique motion-sensing technology, spiced up with some dark humor and comic-alike cel-shaded graphics.

http://last-flight.com/screens/last_flight_screen_01.png

http://last-flight.com/screens/last_flight_screen_02.png

http://last-flight.com/screens/last_flight_screen_03.png

http://last-flight.com/screens/last_flight_screen_04.png

About Gender Wars

Gender Wars is arcade story driven tactic game in which player controls a side in a post apocalyptic world where both genders fight for a domination over the opposite sex. Game modernizes turn based games into dynamic arcade genre with more emphasis on performing actions rather than planning them.

http://blooberteam.com/gender-wars/screens/gw_the_battle_iPad.jpg

About Bloober Team

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Krakow, Poland, Bloober Team is an independent videogame developer focused on creating the highest quality digitally-distributed content.All trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Contact

Peter Bielatowicz

peter.bielatowicz@blooberteam.com

All volunteers that would like to participate in the research please

write to research@blooberteam.com