Launching the third instalment of a game is notoriously difficult especially at a time when a game is released every day. To make Fable III a success we had to: 1- Make Fable III accessible for people who dismissed the franchise as being to niche and complicated.2- Ensure stand out by simultaneously driving huge editorial and PR noise in relevant media whilst genuinely engaging our target market.

Kingmaker was a massive multiplayer smartphone game that preceded the launch of Fable III. Players battled across Europe, conquering territory to earn gold they could spend in Fable III – a world first for gaming. Enabling updates of your actions on social media multiplied gold, incentivising people to spread word for us whilst providing a pre-release incentive to buy Fable III – We created an economy where we paid gamers to do our marketing for us with something they held in great value.

A little over a month from the games release, Peter Molyneux - Fable creator and gaming visionary - unveiled Kingmaker at the Eurogamer Expo to an audience of media and hard-core Fable fans.

Coverage hit the internet immediately.

This was followed by key European gaming events including First Look Expo (Netherlands), Paris Games Festival (France) and Barcelona Manga Show (Spain). Peter was pitched to mainstream national press, alongside technology and gaming sites, to promote the activity. To maintain momentum and drive further conversation with media and consumers, additional PR beats were driven including:- A trailer of the Kingmaker program was released and reposted by fans (totalling +100k views), - Bonuses were added and communicated to press, driving additional rounds of coverage- Momentum releases and ‘leader boards’ releases to drive ‘revolution’ themeOn launch day, we even persuaded celebrity gaming fan Jonathan Ross to attend the UK retail launch event, completely free of charge.

Kingmaker was an unparalleled success story for Xbox - over delivering against every success target and importantly, the value of earned media gained through PR outreach delivered an ROI well beyond the cost of producing the application.

-Over 600 press articles across seven countries, which were 98% positive in tone-Over 20million social media impressions -25% uplift in total Fable III coverage during the 30 days to launch -93,000 players signed up to the campaign-Over 5million flags were planted during the campaign-And most importantly, Fable III entered the retail games charts at number one