Dead Space May 2008

EA knew they had a winning title with Dead Space before it was even released. When they needed to help people live the back story and do some serious world-building, they came to Deep Focus. We love engaging people in a good story online.

To help, we teamed up with the game writers and producers to create an immersive, ARG-like experience called No Known Survivors that allowed fans to explore what was happening in the Dead Space world a mere minutes before the game’s storyline started. By combining authentic in-game objects and artwork – from 3D Maya renderings, to SFX, to action sequences – with original 3D sequences, VO and live action video all rendered in a 3D Papervision Flash experience, we create an entirely original and complementary storyline that prepared users for the gaming experience. Weekly content updates – presented in a deliciously grotesque way: through the mutation of a number of severed body parts into individual alien Necromorphs – begged repeat visits, allowing visitors progressively deeper glimpses into the storyline leading up to the game’s release.

Reception of the experience was fantastic and made headline news on various blogs, most notably on Kotaku, the web’s leading video game blog. With over 600,000 unique participants, No Known Survivors was incredibly popular with both hardcore gamers and Sci-Fi fans alike. The immersive content released weekly created awareness about the game storyline while generating a ton of hype around the game release.