Grateful Dead Launches Much Anticipated Online Game: The Epic Tour
April 20, 2012 (Asheville, NC) – The much anticipated online game from rock band Grateful Dead featuring a digital world inspired by the history, music, and imagery of the legendary band today launched at GratefulDeadGame.com.
Developed in partnership with the Grateful Dead and Rhino Entertainment by digital product development studio Curious Sense, the much anticipated “The Epic Tour” allows players to create and personalize dancing bear characters and enter a fantastical world inspired by the deeply revered cache of music and imagery of the legendary band.
In “The Epic Tour,” players explore immersive environments on an adventure through Grateful Dead time and space, avoiding obstacles, collecting items, uncovering artifacts, and eventually making their way to some of the Dead’s most legendary concerts.
Curious Sense developed the online experience through crowdsourcing – creating a website in which Grateful Dead fans browsed a catalog of more than 2,500 Grateful Dead concerts, voting for shows they deemed “epic.” After collecting more than 30,000 votes over a period of two months, the fans’ top ten Grateful Dead shows were announced, and those ten concerts will make up the destinations in “The Epic Tour.”
“The game is designed to appeal first and foremost to Dead Heads, with an art style, sound design, and narrative authentic to the Grateful Dead legacy,” said Adam Blumenthal, president of Curious Sense, “But it’s also an opportunity to introduce the Grateful Dead to a new set of fans who have grown up with video gaming but weren’t able to see the Dead live. We’re designing ‘The Epic Tour’ as a new point of entry into the amazing universe and timeless appeal of the Grateful Dead.”
An innovative entertainment product designed to appeal to the core fans and prospective fans alike is aligned with the vision of Grateful Dead Productions and Rhino Entertainment, who have worked closely with Curious Sense to provide access to content from the Grateful Dead archive and ensuring the overall quality of the product is respectful of the band’s legacy.
“We're always looking for ways to bring the Grateful Dead's music and history to more people, and ‘The Epic Tour’ will do exactly in a unique and inspired way,” said David Lemieux, Grateful Dead Legacy Manager, “Curious Sense has created a fun, engaging and exciting game that uses the music and the most-voted-on shows as the basis to explore the world of the Grateful Dead. We're all really looking forward to seeing and hearing where this journey takes us”
About Curious Sense
Curious Sense designs (www.CuriousSense.com) builds and manages innovative online and mobile apps and game products based on content from major entertainment properties. Prior to founding Curious Sense, Adam Blumenthal was a digital strategist and producer for twenty years, at elite communications agencies such as R/GA, McKinney, and Burson-Marsteller.
About Rhino Entertainment
Based in Burbank, California, Warner Music Group’s Rhino Entertainment was founded in 1978 and is the world’s leading pop culture label. Emphasizing flawless sound quality, bonus tracks, informative liner notes, award-winning creative packaging, an offbeat sense of humor, and a strong social conscience, Rhino continues to set the standard for excellence in the reissue business it pioneered in both the physical and digital worlds. Rhino is also expanding the definition of what a catalog music company is, as evidenced by the label’s recent name and likeness representation deal with Frank Sinatra and its multi-faceted relationship with Grateful Dead. The vast Rhino catalog of more than 5,000 CDs, videos, and digital exclusive albums features material by Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, The Doors, Chicago, Black Sabbath, John Coltrane, Yes, Alice Cooper, Linda Ronstadt, The Ramones, The Monkees, Carly Simon, Curtis Mayfield, among many others.
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