Vindictus

A DECLARATION OF BRUTAL ELEGANCE.

One my duties while Creative Director at Nexon America was to help the marketing team deliver the games that came from Seoul to the NA audience. At times that was unfortunately limited to language translation, but with Vindictus we had a rare opportunity to go further due to the agency the Korean development studio granted us. 

Vindictus was originally named “Mabinogi Heroes”, based on the popularity of the game Mabinogi in Korea, as well as a loose backstory link. However, acceptance of Mabinogi in North America was more limited and niche, and the gameplay, style & tone was entirely different ... in short each game had clearly different consumer promises. On top of this, NA players simply had a hard time remembering, and even pronouncing, the name Mabinogi. We asked to change the name and visual branding and were given permission to do so. Before doing anything we did a full brand discovery & defintion process with the game team and then started the execution phase with the name. Through weeks of brainstorming and consumer feedback a name I suggested was chosen, but instead of getting developer approval at this point we pushed ahead and developed the logo & logotype, palette, key art and overall visual style. The name and identity package was presented as a whole and approved on the spot. The approach worked.

The visual style, marked by blood red, gold and black was inspired by the Book of Kells and the action-oriented gameplay. The backstory of Vindictus is driven by Scottish lore and as an MMORPG story is a huge part of the game for prospective players. The illuminated manuscript “V” spoke to that importance of story, the Scottish roots and the crow woven into the icon represented the goddess Morrighan who plays a key role in the game’s over-arching story. A rare treat for me was to develop a custom font for the game, which was used in all promotional materials as well as in-game.

(2010. Work created at Nexon. Icon designed by Kyle McQueen. Website example designed in-house by Nexon.)