A few weeks ago at Clinic/Small Japanese Soldier we launched Tape it or Die, the main promotional website for the release of Capcom’s zombie-slaughter console game, Dead Rising 2.

The site is supported by a great back story of four zombie-obsessed characters who run the blog, and are on their way to Fortune City (a fictional Vegas-like city) for a party and to attend Terror is Reality, (a Gladiators-style zombie-slaying arena game).  With Tape it or Die and the Fortune City website we also launched the official Dead Rising 2 product site.

Blood and gore aside, Deadrising 2 is an interesting plot and character driven game, with more than a few layers of conspiracy theory and the emotive plot line (dad fights to save daughter) that maybe reflects what the creators reckon Deadrising gamers have been doing since the first release.

What has amazed me is the enthusiasm and appetite the gamer audience has for this. Many are actively participating in the role play of the backstory, many are prodding and prying at the site and its content for more clues about the game (to varying degrees of success). On launch the buzz generated around the site took the server down. Admittedly that was probably due to many thinking the buzz was for a game release announcement as opposed to the launch of a promotional website)

Tape it or  Die and the supporting site are all multi-language and contain multi-region content. Tape it or Die has a membership signup linked to Capcom communities and (a soon to be released) user upload area.  Capcom are periodically releasing exclusive pre-release game content (videos and screenshots) via the site blog.

For my part I was mostly involved in supporting our developers and designers while we faced a constantly changing set of requirements that emerged from each client meeting. We rewrote the specs for this site more than a few times.  I wasn’t involved in any direct coding or development until the few weeks before launch, when I picked up from our contract developer.

Tape it or Die uses a heavily customised instance of Drupal, while the others are running on a CodeIgniter base, using a custom helper I wrote to manage the age gate, multi language and multi region requirements