The partnership between Double Fusion and Gala-Net marks yet another step the videogame ad company is taking to help the online game industry enable new business models, delivering high-quality 3D gaming experiences to consumers for free, through the support of contextual advertising.

"Gala-Net is bringing online entertainment and communities to the next level by giving gamers the most thrilling, highest quality services for free," said John Young, Gala-Net vice president and producer of Upshift StrikeRacer. "As someone who knows the in-game advertising market intimately, I am confident that Double Fusion shares these goals, and has the experience and the sales team to help us make that happen."

Upshift StrikeRacer is the first free-to-play online game to combine modern vehicles with a full arsenal of weaponry and a robust community for gamers looking both for a social network and for head-to-head destructive racing battles on a multiplayer scale. The game provides players with 20 different maps and the opportunity to compete with up to seven other StrikeRacers at a time through multiple modes of play including Team versus Team, straight timed racing and the no-holds barred StrikeRacing mode, pitting both their driving skills and their arsenals against each other. Extensive player community tools include the ability for StrikeRacers to create their own Club web pages onto which they can upload photos and music, share their blogs and network with other StrikeRacers around the world to develop real-world friendships.

Upshift StrikeRacer is an ideal fit within the Double Fusion network, which is steadily developing a stable of the highest-quality games ranging from the best free-to-play online titles to top retail titles as well as leading social networking destinations. As a racing and combat game, Upshift StrikeRacer provides a natural environment for a wide-range of advertising opportunities that are appropriate to the environment, allowing Double Fusion to offer marketers videogame ad forms spanning from dynamic 2D placements and 3D objects to sponsored game events and tournaments that leverage brands while driving incremental game distribution and play.

"Double Fusion is always looking to increase our network with games within which advertising is not only a natural fit, but where it enhances gameplay -- Upshift StrikeRacer is the perfect example, as gamers expect to see these environments, ads included, authentically replicated within the gaming landscape," said Jonathan Epstein, president and CEO of Double Fusion. "We consider it an enormous compliment that John Young, who knows the in-game advertising business from the inside out based on his tenure at Massive, has chosen to work with Double Fusion."

The addition of Upshift StrikeRacer to the Double Fusion network underscores the company's commitment to offering their advertiser and agency partners a wide array of videogame advertising opportunities, to maximizing revenues for its publisher and developer partners and to building a portfolio of top titles among retail PC and console games, massively multiplayer online games, casual downloadable games and advanced online games.

The free Upshift StrikeRacer download will be available in August 2007.