Resident Evil 5 is one of the hottest games of the year, and Capcom wouldn't have it any other way. Resident Evil 4 was one of the most acclaimed games of the previous generation, so hype had been steadily building for the next iteration in the blockbuster survival horror franchise. Capcom stoked the fire and has managed to turn the anticipation into a frenzy.

How did they do it? Like marketing for any large game these days, it involved a composite campaign of elements both online and off. We got the 411 from Chris Kramer, Senior Communications Director at Capcom, and Mike Webster, Director of Marketing for Resident Evil.

Just in time for the fireworks show!
Any campaign is still bulwarked by solid online trailers and TV advertising. Resident Evil 5 is no exception, having been largely introduced via a trailer at E3 2007. Of course, these early previews led to initial discomfort and accusations of racism because of the game's setting and the portrayal of a white protagonist killing black zombies. That controversy has mostly subsided, however, leaving most people anticipating the full game.

"The production team in Japan... those guys are amazing storytellers, so the theme of the trailers was 'What story do we want to tell?' on both the PR and marketing side," expressed Webster. "If we want to talk about the relationship between Chris and Sheva or about the village we can, and that's what we focused on the Leipzig/TGS trailers. In the last trailers, we introduced Excella, Wesker and the mysterious hooded character at the end. It's a last tease before [gamers] get to play the game itself; we tried to hint at the story without giving it all away."

"We wanted to stay consistent, so [the TV spots] linked to the viral campaign we've been rolling out," he continued. "We wanted to showcase the depth of the game and doing that in 30 seconds is hard, so we've done full 60-second ads. One of the events that you should look at in this time of year is March Madness, which gives us the most reach we can get. Expect to see ads on Spike, Comedy Central, ESPN and the like. We feel like this is a real big win for us, and we feel it's going to generate a lot of water cooler talk."

Just what happened at Kijuju?
Speaking of the game's viral campaign, last year an email was sent out with 'It came from Kijuju' printed over and over again in the body, with a link included for a corresponding website. The site itself slowly unveiled various trailers and exclusive materials, helping to spread the word and draw more people in.

"When we were thinking about what we wanted to do, we thought again about how the folks in Japan are great storytellers, we wanted to leverage the best asset we had and tell our own story," Webster explained. "We focused on these viral videos to provide content to those that follow the brand on a daily basis and also worked in conjunction with PR to leverage the game and include content within those videos that was going to be featured in a lot of events PR is doing. Sometimes text can be limiting and doesn't give the full picture, but with something like this, we can release videos and tie it to the story about Chris Redfield and his life after Kijuju. Similar to how his experiences there made such an impression on him, we think it's comparable with the jump to the next gen platforms that Resident Evil is making."

"With regards to the viral campaign, we looked to broaden the audience with a website, where people were able to discover what the password is for the site," he added. "When they shared [it with friends], they'd receive exclusive backgrounds, screensavers and the like. We achieved a high level of success asking the audience to get the word out and one in two people shared it with friends. We had about 19 or 20 shares per person and it solidified our strategy to reach more people than with Resident Evil 4."