New Service to Improve User Experience, Boost up Heroes of Newerth Game Play at LAN Centers Around the World
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA and KALAMAZOO, MI -- July 7, 2010 -- Games industry marketing agency and LAN center promoter, iGames, and independent game developer and publisher, S2 Games, have teamed up to launch a new service allowing gamers to play the Action-RPG game Heroes of Newerth (HoN)
with their own individual accounts at LAN centers without having to
pre-purchase the game. This service is now available for seat purchase
by LAN centers in more than 30 countries around the world.
This
LAN center-specific solution makes account-based games better suited
for the LAN center environment. Until now, the only way gamers could
play the game at LAN centers before buying it was for those LAN centers
to purchase "house accounts" to share among multiple users, which
restricted the extent to which their customers could develop their own
in-game experience and severely limited the playability in a LAN center
environment. Alternatively, gamers had to purchase their own game in
order to be able to use their personal account credentials to play at
the center. This defeated the whole "try before you buy" model that has
been a major modus operandi for LAN centers.
This new
service allows LAN center customers to create personal accounts and
play as much as desired before deciding whether they wish to purchase
the game to continue playing from home or anywhere else. LAN centers
provide them exclusive, unlimited access to their own characters and
game play settings, allowing for game persistence and an overall better
gaming experience.
"We've looked for ways to improve user experience for our games and maximize playability no matter where people play," said Marc DeForest, CEO of S2 Games.
"LAN centers are great venues where Heroes of Newerth has been very
popular ever since the beta was released. So, it made sense for us to
support them and help them promote our product further," he explained.
"As the LAN center industry champion, iGames was the perfect partner to
do that," he added.
"We are thrilled that S2 committed to making this great game even better for LAN center customers," stated Mark Nielsen, iGames' President.
"This solution demonstrates how LAN centers can be a great platform to
launch and grow the community of account-based and persistent games,"
he further explained. "In addition, this will allow a better assessment
of the impact LAN centers have on a game's popularity, which should
prove very valuable for publishers' future promotion strategies,"
Nielsen concluded.
"The Heroes of Newerth Service has
provided our center with a cost effective way of offering the game to
our customers with all the benefits of a retail account," said Brian Cuerdon, General Manager of Euphnet Cyber Café
in Sunnyvale, California. "It is also a great opportunity for our
customers to try the game out before deciding to buy it for themselves.
I highly recommend this program to other LAN centers, as it is
beneficial to both their business and their customers' experience at
their centers," Cuerdon added.
Since its limited
release last month, the service has generated hundreds of LAN center
transactions and thousands of gamer account creations. For more
information about the service or to sign up, visit http://lancenters.com/services/s2games/heroesofnewerth.aspx or contact iGames directly at membership@igames.org or 650-917-9888 x215.