October 27, 2006

Xfire Crowns Winners of “World of Warcraft Summer Movie Contest”

Favorite Machinima Movies In Four Categories Announced - $23,000 In Prizes Awarded to Winners

Xfire, Inc., a division of Viacom Inc.’s MTV Networks, unveiled the winners of the “World of Warcraft Summer Movie Contest” last night at a special Machinima event and screening at Stanford University. The contest winners, chosen by the gaming community, Blizzard and Xfire, each took home a portion of the $23,000 in total prizes.

Xfire tapped into its 5.5 million user base and the millions of World of Warcraft® players for the “World of Warcraft® Summer Movie Contest,” welcoming entrants from around the world to create movies using Blizzard’s wildly popular World of Warcraft® . Five outstanding finalists were selected in each of four separate categories, and gamers everywhere went to xfire.com to vote for their favorite Machinima movies.

“Machinima is an extraordinary new art form that allows anybody with time and talent to create great works of entertainment which can be instantly distributed to a global audience,” said Mike Cassidy, CEO of Xfire. “The finalist movies from this contest were already viewed over one million times on Xfire – not a bad month for an independent movie at the box offices.”

The contest winning movies are outstanding examples of the originality and creativity behind this exciting, emerging art form. Winners from each category are as follows:

Best Overall & Best Drama/Action

• Jason Choi - The Edge of Remorse

Comedy

• Ryan and John Ebenger - The Brother’s Tauren 2

Music Video/Dance

• Brandon Dennis - The Anti-Elf Anthem

Short Film

• Jun Falkenstein - The Ballad of the Noob

For more details on the competition and to view the finalists and winning movies, please visit: http://www.xfire.com/wow.

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