Twelve years ago, a curious variation on traditional fantasy tabletop games was created in Britain. While it still featured Warhammer-like creatures such as orcs, elves and dwarves, the structure of the game was based on American football rather than the standard strategy battles.
The game, Blood Bowl, soon became popular – and is now finally heading to retail shelves in video game form. Already published throughout Europe by Focus Home Interactive, Blood Bowl now arrives in Blighty in the safe hands of THQ.
Released on handhelds and PC, with a console version in the works, Blood Bowl holds true to its tabletop counterpart, challenging players with a turn-based strategic romp that gives new meaning to the term ‘fantasy football’.
“The team at Cyanide have done a fantastic job of accurately recreating the turn-based play mechanics of the tabletop game that will be familiar to Blood Bowl fans in the UK,” says head of marketing for UK and Europe Jon Rooke. “It also delivers an exciting and new real-time play version of the game that will appeal to a wider audience that may not be as familiar with turn-based strategy titles.
“Added to that is full support of online leagues and tournaments, which have already fostered a strong community in other European markets. The PSP and DS versions of the game will enable fans to fine-tune their strategies and advance their teams up the league tables on the go, as well as allowing for ad hoc multiplayer games.”
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Players control a team of fantasy creatures and work to carry the ball to their opponent’s scoring zone as many times as possible before the game ends. Far from sticking to standard football practices, this is a much more violent game as teams set out to literally massacre each other.
Given THQ’s previous retail successes with titles in this vein of fantasy, the publisher is confident it is well equipped to build upon the success of the original tabletop Blood Bowl and take the franchise to new heights.
“We have a great understanding of the Games Workshop consumer from our years publishing the Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War titles, which have now sold in excess of four million copies worldwide,” says Rooke. “We plan to utilise that insight into the Games Workship consumer to laser-target our campaign and excite the fans.”
Direct mail and other similar initiatives will be the cornerstone of THQ’s campaign, not only targeting the audience through its sizeable database, but also through partnerships with Games Workshop and the publisher’s retail partners.
A heavyweight PR campaign has been running for some time, most notably with weekly top-slot placements on Gametrailers.com for a series of eight ‘Meet the Champions’ videos showcasing the different teams available in the game. The first three of these have already enjoyed over 100,000 views.
“We’re very excited to be partnering with Focus Home Interactive to bring Blood Bowl to the UK,” adds Rooke. “The game has been critically acclaimed and enjoyed huge commercial success in other European markets since its release in June – most notably France, where it was the second best-selling title throughout July, and Germany, where it came fourth in the charts.
“The UK is the home of Blood Bowl and we are confident that we will see a very similar level of success with the title on its home turf.”
