Happy New Year! 2010 already?

It seems like forever since I last blogged. That can be explained. From Carlsbad to Redwood City, it has been a busy time since joining Xfire’s marketing and business development team in June. Xfire is an interesting company located in Menlo Park and situated at the forefront of video game marketing. We run targeted advertising campaigns and events. I write and publish website data, content, and create post campaign analytical reports. These past couple months we’ve been getting ready for a gameplay video contest like none other- the “Video Capture Awards,” a gameplay video festival uniting gamers and publishers in an unprecedented “machinima” competition.

The VCAs (as we’ve come to call them) welcomes players from any game to upload videos and encourages machinima film makers to submit their best movies to win prizes. A number of publishers are involved: Turbine, Codemasters, Nexon, S2 Games, Ijji, NDOORS, Outspark, Uforia, Games-Masters, Aeria Games, YNK Interactive, G4 Box, and more.

Sponsored by iBuyPower, Gunnar Optiks, Roccat, NZXT, Antec and Xfire, the event boasts 2 grand prize achievements, 6 general categories, over a dozen publisher sponsored specific game categories, and more than $25,000 in prizes. Each week we’re also announcing a special Xfire Reels category.

To win a particular category, participants need mad gaming skills, a network of friends to deem their videos cooler than their opponents and luck of the draw for the player with the most cool votes wins!

The contest can be found at http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_vcas with the specific publisher categories at http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_vcas_pub.

Commentary

What is really unique about this contest is the way we are bringing machinima to the average gamer; we’re making it simple for users to upload, watch, and manipulate gameplay video content all the while interacting with friends in a very social way. Prizes go a long way towards making the contest fun and rewarding. So far we’ve had over 1000 entrants. That number looks to grow. I predict  30,000+ for the contest!