Congratulations to Ian Lucier (@CrazyBagMan) for winning the 40-page Mistbound artbook! We will soon contact you via Direct Message to ask for your location details, so we can get the artbook shipped to you as quickly as possible.

The artbook contains exclusive artwork for Mistbound, Greed Corp and our next game. The foreword is written by our creative director and the book features the original six drawings that served as the beginning of Mistbound.

For all the people that tweeted in the competition and others that enjoy our artwork, we’re doing an update to the artwork published on this site and on Facebook. But of course some images will remain exclusive to the artbook…

We’re giving away one of those artbooks to one random person from all the people that participate in our Xbox LIVE Arcade Twitter competition. You don’t need to have Greed Corp or even an Xbox, but you do need a Twitter account. To participate, first you need to go to the Greed Corp profile page on the Xbox.com Marketplace and rate the game. Then tweet the bold/italic text below through your Twitter account.

I rated Greed Corp on Xbox.com (http://is.gd/9ruet) for a chance to win a Mistbound artbook: http://is.gd/9rHkJ @WGamesStudio

Also make sure you follow @WGamesStudio on Twitter, as we will send the winner a direct message to ask for shipping details. As soon as we go over 1000 ratings on the US Marketplace, we’ll randomly select the winner from all the people that tweeted the above text. So get the rating and tweeting going!

At the end of last year, we were very happy to welcome EDGE to our studio in Amsterdam. This resulted in a 4-page article on Greed Corp and Mistbound, containing an interview with our marketing manager Marco van Haren and our creative director Marcel du Long.

“Thousands of pieces of concept art have been drawn, magazines and newspapers within the universe have been made, and we even came up with a brand of tea.”

If you want to know why Greed Corp is the first Mistbound game, how elaborate the universe already is and what we intend to do with it, you should really check out the entire article. To do so, pick up EDGE’s March edition (#212).

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS – February 11 2010 – Their mining technology is state-of-the art. Their corporate philosophy is to relentlessly strip the land of its resources for maximum financial profit, and anyone or anything that stands in the way of that is just collateral damage. They are the Cartel, a shadowy web of corporations, and the third of the four factions from the innovative turn-based strategy game Greed Corp from W!Games, releasing on PlayStation®Network, Xbox LIVE® Arcade for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system and Windows PC in early 2010.

Excelling at pulling everything that is valuable out of the earth, the Cartel are fast, efficient and thoughtless in their single-minded pursuit of profit. Publicly establishing alliances only when it serves their own corporate purpose, their extensive network of spies pursues their true aims unhindered in the background. The Cartel are as trustworthy as jackals.

The unit used to mine the earth’s natural resources is the harvester, and the cartel’s is the best there is. In Greed Corp, the harvester turns land layers and land tiles into spendable credits, but slowly destroys the land itself by doing so. A true tactician, understanding the offensive value of a harvester, can initiate a self-destruct. This can create a strategic advantage, but it will do even more damage to the environment, possibly triggering a chain reaction of collapsing critical tiles.

Read the full article here.

This Monday, it was Martin Luther King Day, which meant that most press offices were closed. That’s why we spent this day visiting online editors and bloggers at their own home. This felt a bit weird, but it created an informal and personal atmosphere. First up was Contra Costa, where we showed up almost completely soaked because of the increasing rain. As this was our first presentation since the UK press tour last year, we had to get back into it a bit. We relied on the trusted structure used earlier, meaning we would start with a studio introduction and then the Mistbound world trailer before we would jump into the game. Our audience of one seemed very much interested and asked some questions to get more details.

The US PR representative traveling with us also made some nice contributions to our story, based on his experience with the game. To show the press what the future of Mistbound is going to be, we ended the presentations with an early build of the next game taking place within the world we created. It’s a top-down action shooter, of which we will of course reveal more in due time. Everybody responded very well to it, as they did to Greed Corp. Marco spotted a copy of Mass Effect 2 on our host’s table, so we spent a couple of minutes talking about his opinion on the game before we left for the next appointment at Game Revolution. It took some time to find their office, but once there the paper on the door set the mood right away.

Fortunately we were not treated as solicitors and both people present at the time took place in front of the big television for our presentation. Again, both seemed to like both Greed Corp and the next project, once again confirming that we had a good game on our hands and more to come. After that, we left for Destructoid. Most of our appointments were located in Berkeley, a university area just east of downtown San Francisco, on the other side of the Bay Bridge. So it was just a short drive to the next press appointment. We met Ben at his place and upon arrival he asked us whether we wanted to show the game on the living room’s 22” screen or on his brand new 40” television. He didn’t want to share his new purchase with his roommates and put it in his own room, which is perfectly understandable.

Ben was also very much into the game and particularly liked how we were operating as a studio, with multiple downloadable games taking place within the Mistbound universe. He told us he would have the article up quickly, maybe even the same evening, so we were very much looking forward to that. Ben also gave us the name of a good place to get lunch. Whenever in Berkeley, do not be put off by the name Bongo Burger or its appearance! They actually have some of the best burgers you can get. After this quite fulfilling meal, we went over to Chris P. from GotGame. First we rang the doorbell at the wrong house, but with a quick phone call we were able to locate him and show him our games. He was really into Greed Corp and already started thinking about possible strategies within the game. I can imagine him doing quite well when he gets to play the game against others.

Last but not least: the guys from Giant Bomb. We left the student city of Berkeley for the marina town of Sausalito, where once again we had trouble finding our contacts. They were certainly not at the address we had, nor its underground parking lot, but after a quick call we found out they were just down the road. We met Brad, Ryan and Vinny in their cool basement office and sat down on the demo couch to record a quick Greed Corp match, with me explaining the game and them asking questions. Because that changed the way we presented the game and I couldn’t pause the game during recording, I started out a little nervous, but that all went away after starting a match and finding out the Giant Bomb guys liked it a lot. It was the perfect way to end the day. We were all pretty tired, but very pleased with the results and the positive response we got from everyone. More on the next day in San Francisco soon!

“We can continue to look forward to variety and fun coming from W!Games.” – Anthony Cara, GamingEvolution

Both videos are now available on the GameTrailers website. Click here to check out the Strategy Mechanics Interview. The video walkthrough has been split into two parts, watch part 1 and part 2.

Of course you can find all the media and news here that we put out, including all screenshots and trailers. With the launch of this website, we’re also starting our developers blog, with coming articles on the development of Greed Corp, future products and other interesting stuff we do inside and outside of the office. All written by a variety of W!Games employees from different work areas.

Other blogs are coming up as well, including one by an Empire general that will tell you all about the strategic details of Greed Corp. We will also share with you the stories found in a legendary pirate leader’s travelling journal. You will learn more about him in Greed Corp, but his writings will give you more insight into the world of Mistbound.

An a more technical note, we have integrated the message board system with the main site tech, so that you can use one profile across all pages and forums. This unfortunately requires you to register again if you were using the old message boards, but by doing so you’ll get a chance to win a free copy of Greed Corp. Check out the competition post for more information on that.

We’re still making adjustments and additions, so look out for some improvements and more content. If you run into any issues with the site or the boards, please let us know on the forum we made for that.