Heavy.com: Game for Fall Programming

By Enid Burns | October 12, 2005

Video content site Heavy.com is ramping up seven new branded entertainment programs for video game publishers. The machinima series are set in the video game environments from upcoming titles from Activision, Atari, Sony and Electronic Arts. The programs are machinima works -- animated digital video clips created using video game engines and often humorous voiceovers. Heavy.com produces the shows and throws them in as "value adds" to publishers who bought media on the site. "The rich media component is the show itself," Heavy.com co-CEO, David Carson, told ClickZ News. "While it could be considered a nice three-to-four minute advertisement, it's also an entertaining show that doesn't feel like an advertisement." Heavy.com did a similar deal with Sony in which the "Pimp my Weapon" series was used to promote the God of War title. Heavy.com said it streamed 5.5 million episodes of that series by July, resulting in 45 million consumer impressions. Heavy.com's new fall shows include "Gangster Nanny 911," "Tourettes Cowboy," "The Amazing Super Powered Emo Kid," "Honey, I killed the Geezer," "Dr. Philpra, Colossus Whisperer," "Half-Metal Jacket," and "Need for Speed: The Musical." Machinima was a medium created by hard-core gamers, but has increased in popularity on the Web and TV. The "Red vs. Blue" series created using Halo became a pop culture phenomenon and MTV2 uses machinima to recreate music videos in "Video Mods." "It [machinima] expanded out to a wider audience and got more exposure for the games themselves," said Carson.

Heavy.com gets more than 6 million unique viewers monthly, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Advertisers on the broadband network include Diesel, Axe, Sony and Nike.