SAN FRANCISCO - (Business Wire) Kongregate, the leading indie games site featuring 20,000 games set within an addictive social environment, today announced it will launch Infected Fury Month, an exclusive meta-game sponsored by Electronic Arts and featuring the anticipated blockbuster videogame from Valve, Left 4 Dead 2™. Infected Fury Month – available only on Kongregate – is a four-week-long program where players participate and earn points while socializing and playing popular Flash games on Kongregate. Infected Fury Month kicks off in the run-up to Halloween on Oct. 23 and runs through Nov. 20. During Infected Fury Month, Kongregate will unleash a pandemic, able to turn all Kongregate players into infected zombies. One small group of Kongregate users will be turned into zombies while another group will be turned into survivors. Zombies will infect new zombies, and survivors will train others to become new survivors. Players will earn points by infecting, or training, other players during chat, or by visiting players’ profile pages on Kongregate and pushing a Left 4 Dead 2 button. When players become “infected,” both their avatar and profile page will get grayed out and spattered with red blood and gore. Survivor avatars will display a glowing silver shield.
From a Left 4 Dead 2 branded area on Kongregate, players will learn the basic game mechanics, so they can join in immediately. They will also have access to situation updates, track which chat rooms are overrun with infected zombies, and let them watch the spread of the pandemic. Kongregate users can also get into the fun by turning their avatars into characters right out of Left 4 Dead 2. They can either be one of the main four survivor characters or a “Special Infected” zombie, such as the Charger, or Wandering Witch.
“Infected Fury Month demonstrates the truly effective benefits of viral branding on Kongregate. We have over six million highly engaged gamers who will love getting involved with other players this way,” noted Lee Uniacke, chief revenue officer at Kongregate. “As Kongregate players experience yet another fun way to interact within the community, we’re building additional consumer excitement for next month’s launch of Left 4 Dead 2 on Xbox 360 and PC. Users on our site will be deeply enmeshed in the fiction of Left 4 Dead 2 by the time it hits store shelves."
Left 4 Dead has sold over 2.5 million retail copies since it was released in November of 2008. Left 4 Dead 2 is targeted for release on Xbox 360 and the PC on November 17, 2009, and will be launched worldwide with a $25 million dollar marketing campaign across TV, Outdoor, and Online.
About Kongregate
Kongregate is a leading indie web game site, getting more than 1 million game plays a day and 1 thousand new games added a month. Its audience is over six million unique users worldwide according to ComScore. The audience is 93 percent young men who come to earn points and badges for their Kongregate profiles on an achievement system patterned after Xbox Live. The most popular games on Kongregate mirror those on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and DS and are free to users. Kongregate shares ad revenue with the indie game makers themselves and its advertising base includes brands like Axe, Sony Pictures, EA, Sprint, Frito Lay, XBox 360, 2K Sports, Focus Features, Toyota, Stride Gum, Nokia, and Scion. Additionally, Kongregate has premium games on the site, where users can buy virtual goods using their micro transaction platform, Kongregate Kreds.
Based in San Francisco, CA, the company was founded in 2006 by brother-and-sister team Jim Greer, a game industry veteran, and Emily Greer, an interactive marketing executive. An award-winning company, Kongregate is the recipient of two Webby Awards and was included on Time Magazine’s list of the Top 50 Websites of 2008.
Radiate PR for Kongregate
Laurie Thornton, 650-654-2660
laurie@radiatepr.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/lauriethornton
