The final episode of the massively multi-player online game (MMO) CrimeCraft: Bleedout, will be released March 5 by Vogster Entertainment. It’s the first MMO to offer major weekly content updates in the structure of a TV miniseries.
“Many other offer content updates, with new stories and evolving plotlines, but none of them have done it on a weekly basis,” says campaign producer Mike Kennedy.
“Bleedout is the first MMO to offer new episodic content on such an aggressive schedule. The key toa healthy MMO is intriguing players to keep coming back into the virtual world on a regular basis, to continue to explore and grow and, ideally, tell all their friends,” he says.
Bleedout is first major content expansion for CrimeCraft, which debuted in 2009. It’s free-to-play, with premium content available for purchase as a monthly subscription or as tickets to an individual episode.
Gamers navigate a world of rival gangs vying for control of fictional Sunrise City amid post-peak oil chaos.
Each episode is of the Bleedout game is bookended by 40 minutes of tone-setting motion comic cutscenes, featuring work by a different comic artist, including Tim Bradstreet, Nathan Fox, Howard Chaykin, Ben Templesmith, Glenn Fabry, and Trevor Hairsine.
Kennedy is writing and producing story-related content for the Bleedout series, including plot, script, voice casting and direction, cutscene animation and production, and music direction.
He’s also the writer of a graphic novel scheduled for April solicitation by Archaia Entertainment (the street date hasn’t been set.)
“While the game puts players in the ruined, gang-infested aftermath of this global economic disaster, the graphic novel explores the back story in more detail, and examines how such a seemingly-outlandish scenario isn’t quite as outlandish as one might think,” Kennedy says.
Episodes have been rolling out since December. “Players can gather online at the moment of premiere,
when the missions are ‘unlocked’ live, or they can initiate the episode missions at any point through the week, on their own schedule, not unlike watching a show on DVR,” Kennedy says.
Kennedy is a 20-year video game veteran for publishers including Electronic Arts and Activision, and a comic book writer for 15 years, on such titles as Star Wars, Superman, Alien vs Predator, and Aeon Flux.
Kennedy and executive producer Michael Mendheim direct creative from Vogster’s Skokie office. Fifteen employees run the business side from Saddle River, New Jersey, and about 100 production artists and programmers develop the games in Kiev, Ukraine.
Kennedy will be manning a table at the C2E2 Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, March 18-20 at McCormick Place, West Building, 2301 W. Lake Shore Drive.
Vogster’s Skokie office is at 8044 Lincoln Avenue. Call 847/674-4550.
