DOUBLE FUSION EXPANDS NETWORK WITH KUMA GAMES' ORIGINAL AND TV-BASED EPISODIC TITLES
Multi-Year Deal to Allow Advertisers to Reach Gamers Through Seamless Campaigns Across Television, Games, Web
SAN FRANCISCO - Nov. 7, 2007 -- Leading videogame advertising provider Double Fusion has entered into a multi-year partnership with leading episodic game producer Kuma Games to place ads into several of the publisher's free-to-play original and TV-based episodic titles, including KumaWar, DinoHunters, The History Channel's Dogfights, The History Channel's Shootout! and Spike TV's The Kill Point. The addition of Kuma's episodic games to the Double Fusion network will enable its advertiser partners to reach gamers through frequent fresh content and create an ongoing relationship between players and brands. The TV-based properties, which are supported solely by advertising, open new opportunities for marketers to reach their audiences through cross-media campaigns that capitalize on the Kuma games, on the television shows themselves and on the supporting websites.
"Our partnership with Kuma Games adds to the variety of titles and the broad reach we can offer advertisers," Jonathan Epstein, president and CEO of Double Fusion said. "The unique value of Kuma's games is that many of them have content rooted in existing TV shows from The History Channel and Spike TV, which have large fan bases. Through Kuma's games, marketers can reach to the core gamer, and well beyond."
Three of the Kuma games added to the Double Fusion network are based on popular TV series: The History Channel's "Dogfights" and "Shootout!" and Spike TV's "The Kill Point." In Kuma's game, Dogfights, players experience some of history's greatest aerial battles first hand. In Shootout!, gamers can play alone or with an army of friends in a first-person battle to survive history´s deadliest shootouts using authentic weaponry like sniper rifles, Stinger missiles, Katanas and flamethrowers. Roles players can take on range from a fierce Vietcong soldier in the epic infiltration of the US Embassy in Saigon to the first American to sink his boots into the sands of Iwo Jima. Spike TV's The Kill Point pits gamers in massive multiplayer face-offs, declaring war on bands of criminals or seasoned SWAT teams. Also included in the deal are two original games, KumaWar and DinoHunters. KumaWar puts players on the front lines of today's real-world military events. DinoHunters features multi-player combat with some of the most terrifying beasts known to man. One of the components that differentiates Kuma's episodic content from other media, and which allows their games and the brand placements within them to make a stronger impact, is that on average, users play each episode approximately sixteen times.
Elements of the deal include rich media pre-roll, interstitials and dynamic in-game product placement with 3D objects; creating opportunities for advertisers to develop seamless campaigns across game, TV and web. The episodic games are downloaded as separate levels over time, creating a significant opportunity to build in sponsorship programs for advertisers who want to truly customize their campaign.
"Today's 18 - 35 year old man demands more action, more immersion, and more community interaction in his entertainment than old media can ever provide," says Keith Halper, CEO of Kuma Games. "With the help of Double Fusion's superb brands and advertisers, Kuma engages 'Man 2.0' with the intense 3D action he craves, free of charge, while providing sponsors with brand exposure and deep emotional engagement that's really unattainable in any other way."
The addition of Kuma's titles to the Double Fusion network underscores the company's commitment to offering their advertiser and agency partners a wide array of videogame advertising opportunities, to maximizing revenues for its publisher and developer partners and to building a portfolio of top titles among retail PC and console games, massively multiplayer online games, casual downloadable and advanced online titles.
About Kuma
KUMA, LLC. ( www.kumagames.com) is the industry leader in the new market for Episodic Video Games - intense, up-to-the-minute 3D game experiences delivered to PCs in weekly episodes. Kuma's network of free, ad-supported game series makes high-end game play accessible to mass market consumers. Each week, players' PCs are updated with the latest "gameisode" from their favorite series inspired by just-released TV shows and films, real world news events and pop culture happenings. With over 100 gameisodes currently available in four titles, Kuma has an excess of two million users, with an additional 200,000 new players signing on each month. Kuma's synergy with traditional TV programming -- such as The History Channel® series Shootout! -- makes television more dynamic and more relevant to a media and tech-savvy generation while presenting distinct marketing advantages for TV partners, advertisers, content owners and distributors. With an unprecedented level of user interactivity, Kuma represents a direct analog for television within video games.
Kuma Reality Games, headquartered in New York, NY, is a privately held company.
About Double Fusion
Double Fusion is the game advertising expert. The company brings together the leading in-game ad serving technology, the broadest network of games across a wide variety of genres, and a sales force that has helped create and evolve the in-game advertising industry. Double Fusion provides marketers and their advertising agencies with the broadest range of in-game, around-game and web-based solutions with which to engage and sell the valuable and hard-to-reach gamer demographics. Double Fusion is privately held and headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Jerusalem, London, and Tokyo. More information on Double Fusion is available at www.doublefusion.com.
Advertisers interested in opportunities within the Double Fusion network; and developers and publishers interested in increasing their per-title revenues through integrated and dynamic ad placement opportunities should visit www.doublefusion.com.
Double Fusion is a registered mark of Double Fusion, Inc.
All trademarks, copyrights, registered marks, brand names, registered brand names, product names, and logos found in this press release are the property of their respective owners, may be registered in certain jurisdictions, and are mentioned in this release for identification purposes only.