Today we are excited to present a few projects from our marketing team who have been hard at work over the past couple months preparing for the long road ahead. Our official alpha sign-up page is live and you can now register for a chance to participate. Read below for more information on our alpha sign-up page, an introduction of the marketing team and a couple other topics we want to discuss with you.
Alpha Sign-Up Page
In order to register your interest for the Rise of Agon alpha and join our waiting list, please go to riseofagon.com
On this page you can view our official Darkfall: Rise of Agon logo and teaser trailer. By providing your name and email address you will be added to the list of players interested in joining us during our alpha phase. We will also be tracking the initial interest there is for alpha so that we can better prepare for when a server goes live. Our Rise of Agon forums will now be found under forums.riseofagon.com
Please remember to check your email after you register. We will be communicating future updates about our alpha development as well as any other important information you need to know.
Introducing the Marketing Team
The marketing team has been working on numerous projects over the past few months, and you can see a couple examples of what they have been working on with today's alpha sign-up page, official logos and our first teaser trailer. There are many more things in the pipeline that will be unvieled in the future, but at this time we wanted to introduce the team itself.
Michael - Head of Marketing Strategy
Known to the Darkfall community as "Kasmos", Michael brings his professional expertise in sales and marketing to the Rise of Agon project. He started following the Darkfall franchise back in 2003 and like many others has had MMORPGs ruined because of the style of combat found in Darkfall. His experience in gaming encompasses some of the original MMORPGs such as Ultima Online, EverQuest and Shadowbane as well as competitive first person shooters, role playing games and survival horror to name just a few. He is very excited to be a part of such a diverse and passionate team of individuals and looks forward to helping achieve the potential that Darkfall always had. Outside of gaming he spends his time traveling the world and meeting new people, going to music events and getting immersed in other cultures. Find him on Steam under "Kasmos"!
Derrick - Project Manager
Derrick’s first journey into the world of MMORPG’s started with Asheron’s Call, and he currently fills the Darkfall void in his gaming life with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. As the Project Manager for Big Picture Games he assists the team with executing projects and keeping things organized. In his free time he enjoys gaming, connecting with nature, and riding his motorcycle in the twisting backroads of San Diego, California.
Umberto - Head of Video Production
Umberto has always had a passion for creating videos, so taking on the Head of Video Production role was a seamless transition. Concerning his gaming career, it has been ruined by Darkfall. Since playing it, no other game has come close to adequately substituting it. After it shut down in 2012, Umberto took it hard and would spend his days on street corners with a "Darkfall is coming" sign. He yearns for the day where he can once again roam the jungles of Yssam.
Lars - Lead Audio Production Specialist
Lars is a professional voice actor and audio production specialist. His expertise in these areas helps the team with advertising, marketing campaigns and writing. You can hear a sample of his talent in the recently unvieled teaser video and this will be the first of many instances in which his expertise will shine!
Blaize - Lore and Events Manager
Blaize spends his time pretty evenly betwen taking care of his two kids, gaming and working on the Lore and Events for Darkfall: Rise of Agon. He can be found playing games like Smite, Tribes: Ascend, and others of that nature during the mornings. In the afternoon he spends time gaming with his 6 year old son which usually includes Minecraft, SkySaga or other voxelly building games which his son loves. Most of the lore writing goes on at night once everything starts to quiet down in the house, and he's always looking for people to game with. Feel free to hit him up on his gamer tag of "Edar Surefoot" as he's always ready to play!
Marketing Contributors
There are also some other names we want to mention that work very closely with the marketing team. This includes JJJ who composed the original score in the teaser video, Hugo who is the community manager, Kaerion who helps with support and finance, Rawr who is our system administrator, and Neil who worked on the alpha sign-up page and is also hard at work on our official website.
On Communication and Transparency
As gamers like all of you, we understand how important it is to communicate with and keep a gaming community updated. We realize that there hasn't been much information presented over the past couple of weeks which has led to some concern about our transparency. That said, we feel it would be worse for us to make promises we cannot keep by presenting misleading information. This includes details such as when to expect an alpha server or sweeping game changes that may not be feasible in the short to medium term. On top of that we are all bound under an NDA which is why we cannot discuss in more detail our on-going negotiations with Aventurine, even though we fully understand that you are all craving for more information on that subject.
We do plan on presenting weekly answers to questions you submit to us as well as providing some specifics on early development goals. Our first one of these will be next Friday where we will be discussing the power gap and how we plan to address it.
Thank you!
All of us at Big Picture Games would like to thank you for your continued support and for reading this week's update. Be sure to register on our alpha sign-up page, look for more Q&A answers this Wednesday and expect our first development spotlight on Friday.
Thanks and have a great weekend.