Risen Design Contest Winner Announced

Deep Silver and Piranha Bytes sent out a press release today announcing the winner of their “altar of the undead” design contest for Risen.

International winner of the design contest selected by Piranha Bytes!

In November 2008, Koch Media’s videogame label, Deep Silver, a leading producer and distributor of digital entertainment products, held, together with the Piranha Bytes team, a design contest for the Risen role-playing game.

In this way, Piranha Bytes and Deep Silver offered the rare opportunity to inscribe oneself in a videogame. The competition’s goal was to design an altar of the undead. This design will be used in the game after the contest.

The contest was held in several international areas, and a national winner was chosen from each country’s applications.

In the end, a panel of Piranha Bytes and Deep Silver staff members selected the overall international winner. The winner was Marco Wernicke, aka “Arthus of Kap Dun”.

The altar of the undead designed by Marco Wernicke will be converted into a real 3D model and integrated into the game by the Piranha Bytes team. On top of that, Marco Wernicke will be mentioned in the game’s credits as well as in the game manual.

Due to the great number of highly creative designs, the Piranha Bytes team decided to award another design with a special prize. This design by Nico Biere will also be used in the game.

Along with the PC version, Risen will also appear on Xbox 360®, the video game and entertainment system from Microsoft®.

The official Risen blog the can be found at: http://risen.deepsilver.com

About Deep Silver
Deep Silver develops and distributes interactive games for all platforms. The Deep Silver label means to captivate all computer and video gamers who enjoy and share a passion for thrilling gameplay in modern game worlds. Deep Silver works with its partners to achieve a maximum of success while maintaining the highest possible quality, always focusing on what the customer desires. Deep Silver products are designed to equally appeal to professionals and beginners, children and adults.

Deep Silver has published around 40 games since 2003, including the most successful adventure of 2006, Secret Files: Tun-guska, the bestseller ANNO 1701 (co-published with Sunflowers), the challenging CrossworDS knowledge puzzle game, the horse simulation Horse Life DS, and the soccer MMO World of Soccer Online. Current developments include Warhammer® – Battle Marchâ„¢ (in cooperation with Namco Bandai), the action role-playing game Sacred 2: Fallen Angel (in cooperation with Ascaron), S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, the sinister Chernobyl shooter for PC, and the new game from the Piranha Bytes team. Deep Silver’s own developing studio Deep Silver Vienna opened in 2007. For more information please visit www.deepsilver.com

Koch Media is a leading producer and distributor of digital entertainment products (software, games and movies on DVD). The company’s own sales activities, marketing and distribution extend throughout Europe, and it has formed strategic alliances with numerous software and games manufacturers: Ascaron, Braingame, D3P, G-Data, Gamelife, Kaspersky Lab, Lexware, Namco Bandai, Pinnacle, Square Enix, Sony Online Entertainment, System3, etc. Headquartered in Planegg near Munich/Germany, Koch Media owns publishing and distribution branches in Germany, England, France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and the USA. www.kochmedia.com

About Piranha Bytes
The Piranha Bytes development team, residing in the Ruhr Area, was established in 1997. Approximately 20 people have been a part of this team in its current form since 2001. Piranha Bytes has so far acquired fame even beyond German borders with its RPG successes ‘žGothic( (2001), ‘žGothic II( (2002), ‘žGothic Night of the Raven( (2003) and ‘žGothic 3( (2006). www.piranha-bytes.com