By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

IN an effort to expand services to its players beyond games, online game publisher Level-Up! activated last weekend Game Heroes, a Flash-based website that highlights the best and most unique players of its games.

In an interview, Level Up! Marketing Manager Carlo Ople said the website aims to create model players from among the ranks of gamers in the five games that the company publishes in the Philippines.

Ople said Game Heroes is seen as a website where their gamers “become legends.” These players have eventually made a name for themselves as consistent winners of tournaments or contributors to online forums.

Unlike the other Level Up! websites, Game Heroes will look and feel more professional. All of the featured gamers will have their own personal profiles and photos posted in the site, as well as their achievements in the games they play and even video interviews.

Ople said that the local game publisher will continue building the content of the site. Soon, it will add profiles of the international players of some of the games particularly Ragnarok Online World Championships in October.

“We’ve gotten support from our gaming partners. For one we are hosting the upcoming Ragnarok Tournament so we will be posting the profiles of the Ragnarok players who will compete,” he said.

One of the future plans for the site is to turn it into a social networking portal, though Ople did not mention details as to how this would be done.

Game Heroes features the best and the most unique players in the company’s roster of online games, including Ragnarok, Perfect World, and Freestyle.

Here’s my video interview with Level Up! Philippines’s marketing manager.