ATLANTA, May 8, 2009 – Hi-Rez Studios is pleased to announce the winners of its first-ever Best Fan Site Contest, choosing five fan-run Global Agenda websites to recognize for their superior creative design, depth of content, and innovative use of Community-building features .
Global Agenda, Hi-Rez's debut title, is a fast-paced action massive multi-player online game set in Earth's near future, a spy-fi world of advanced technology and player-driven conflict. The highly anticipated game is currently scheduled to enter its Closed Beta phase this summer. Applications for beta testing are being accepted on the game’s official website at http://www.globalagendagame.com.
The Best Fan Site Contest was announced in early March, and elicited great response from the budding Global Agenda Community. In addition to bragging rights and recognition, the winners receive beta keys that they can distribute to community members, as well as coupons for the Global Agenda Merchandise store. The first-place winner overall also receives exclusive Global Agenda art that can be displayed on their fan site.
“We’re thrilled with the response from the Community around this contest, and the quality of the sites that have been created in a short period of time,” said Stewart Chisam, Vice President of Game Operations. “All five of our winning sites were outstanding and picking a winner was no easy task. We sincerely thank each of the fan site creators for their fantastic effort helping promote the game.” The winners are:
1st Place – Agenda Source (http://www.agendasource.com)
Agenda Source differentiated itself with a sleek web design, a nifty “What We Know” section, and a news section that constantly kept very up to date on the latest happenings inside the Community. A twitter feed, polls and forums keeps the site up-to-snuff from a technology standpoint, and we really liked how prominently the site promotes the other fan sites (including a great link on the main navigation to the Global Agenda Wiki).
2nd Place - Global Agenda Mission Control (http://www.globalagendamc.com)
Global Agenda Mission Control showed great innovation in generating community involvement, including a push to gather community ideas for maps, and an in-depth Q&A with Hi-Rez populated with questions submitted by other readers. While the overall web design was among the simpler of the sites, we thought these features made Mission Control extremely engaging, and we found ourselves frequently visiting.
3rd Place - HexAgenda (http://www.hexagenda.com)
HexAgenda won our hearts with its nifty Feed Aggregator , which provided a single resource to access the RSS feeds from most of the Global Agenda fan sites, in addition to the official Global Agenda News Network. This became our “go to” source for tracking the latest in the Community and a must-have subscription for our news reader! We also loved HexAgenda’s IRC Chat channel, which lets users quickly get together to share info on the game.
4th Place – The Global Agenda Wiki (http://global-agenda.info/wiki)
The Global Agenda Wiki stood out as an endlessly valuable resource that should be heavily promoted on all of the other Fan Sites. In a short time, the site compiled a notable amount of content and we have high hopes for this becoming THE fan-created resource detailing the facts behind Global Agenda.
5th Place – The Alliance of Agencies (http://www.allianceofagencies.com/)
The Alliance of Agencies was a relatively late entrant to the contest and we suspect that if we re-judged this contest in a few weeks they might place even higher. The site’s web design stood out as perhaps the best among the group, and we were attracted by the “hook” the site provides as a gathering place for those seeking more information on Agencies in the game
About Hi-Rez Studios
Hi-Rez Studios, Inc. was established in 2005 to create exceptional online interactive entertainment and is located just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, visit www.hirezstudios.com.
GLOBAL AGENDA, Hi-Rez's debut title, is a fast-paced action massive multiplayer online game set in Earth's near future, a spy-fi world of advanced technology and player-driven conflict. To learn more, visit http://www.globalagendagame.com.