W+K Studio Blog

This month’s First Thursday event focused on the entire Dante’s Inferno campaign. It also highlighted the pre-release campaign called, “Highway to Hell” as well as the second stage final release campaign. It was a great way to show the media what we worked on and called attention all the stuff we made within studio.

Visitors were greeted with warnings both on glass windows and on hand painted signs. We also had copies of the game for people to play with.

Wild postings were placed, but were stolen soon afterward. We wanted to to create a sense of mystery with the posters. The only thing info was the general location and the date of the show.

All the exhibits also had props made specifically for the viral/broadcast spots. Here you can see the kneelers and wii-motes used in MassWePray.

We got a local cake maker to fashion some corpse cakes for our gluttony table. Delightful for all the senses.

Each exhibit had a display showing the process imagery, editorial, websites, and associated movies.

Ken Smith from Channel 8 stopped by to talk about the show. Eric and Paulo were quick to answer all the questions he had for the impromptu news story.

Karen K. and Peter Y., the two headmasters on this project.

Here is one of the many intermittent work meetings trying to finalize all the details before the show opened up.

A few images of the many hands putting together the pop-up art show in a matter of days. It was rewarding and exhausting at the same time.

Check out the statement below:

Dante’s Inferno is a new Electronic Arts action/adventure video game that takes place in  Hell. In our video game version of the famous epic, Dante is a Crusade veteran who returns from battle to discover he must journey through the nine circles of Hell to rescue his beloved Beatrice, whom Satan has stolen for his bride. Players, assuming the role of Dante, must descend from the earth’s surface down through the nine circles of Hell (Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treachery—each level more frightening than the last) to rescue Beatrice from Satan’s grasp. To generate excitement and awareness for the game, we created an interactive campaign leading up to the launch that brought Dante’s Inferno to life. Each month we created unique and provocative executions that were designed to generate conversations and controversy about the game.

Once we had the attention of the gaming community, it was time to go big—to enlarge our focus beyond each individual circle and showcase Hell in all its infernal glory with our launch campaign and to do it in a way that brought the game to life. Go big we did, placing the first video game on the Super Bowl since 1991.

Check out the details.