We are very excited that the new video game magazine Killscreen has secured it’s first round of finance via Kickstarter. Given that Call of Duty 2 just made $310M on its first day, the market is long overdue for more in-depth cultural conversations about gaming.
For starters, read this excellent Wall Street Journal article by Junot Diaz: Grand, but no Godfather. And then subscribe to Killscreen.
We need a freelance video game developer to help Desedo make the Cutest Casual Game Ever. Email your resume and portfolio to michael@desedo.com.
When I first heard Jay-Z’s new song Empire State of Mind, which is a personal map of our hometown, I began to visualize the locations as data points: Stash spot @560 State. Tribeca Grill. MSG. Turns out I was not alone, as Tyler Gray of FastCompany placed Hov’s lyrics to Google Maps. Cool, novel, and any other adjective that can be used to explain how we remix stories within new media.
I asked myself – how could this become even more entertaining? And then, via the Google Geo Developers Blog, I learned that Japanese designer Katsuomi Kobayashi created a driving simulator that uses Google Maps – so that you can drive around any city via the interwebs. Like GTA. 2D or 3D. OMFG.
What if we could meld the two? Therein lies a game of some sort. Alternate or augmented or awesome. Via your computer screen or handheld device, sit in Jay-Z’s SUV and drive around his NYC. It’s like a dash of 2nd Life, and a pinch of ARG and heap of reality to mix it all together. Where can we put this thinking to use for transmedia elements of a narrative, an album release or an advertising campaign? Perhaps, within Heart of the City?
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(Written by erstwhile Desedo intern Jeff Slawsky, a strategist, NYC native and rabid UMich fan.)
Last night I hit 2 ad industry parties, one a launch for FIFA 2009 and the other was Fresh Meet. As the latter wound down, we broke out rockband and went to town (MHB on bass). Lots of very social activity built around a participatory event that requires little actual exertion on the players. This, and several work/social occasions rooted in Buck Hunter, make me wonder about the social similarities in the business world roles of gaming and its stodgy grandfather, golf.
ARGs have traditionally been built for the heavy user – Audi’s Art of the Heist, Halo’s I Love Bees, Batman’s Dark Knight. They all rely on the curiosity and narrative diligence found within the networked smarts of fandom. The payoff may be an invite to an exclusive pre-screening, but that’s not the true ROI for hours invested, it’s the joy of participation and the thrill of the hunt.
While this space has historically been the turf of a small, dedicated group, this model proffers new territory for product placement within film and tv narratives. It draws on the new behavior patterns of a lean-forward life – one in which videogames are surpassing films for screentime. Brand integration can dance with our 2.0 impulse to search and to win, and can reach far further than just hardcore fans. Again, thru the rabbit hole framework of Fall Down, Walk Up, this is an idea we’ve been mulling in our lab.
So. Imagine if our protagonist Alex Tyler is standing outside a SoHo loft, talking with a potential client. A wheatpasted concert poster is in the background, either with the name of a band or a URL. I’ll wager that even casually curious viewers will Google the name while watching – presenting a chance to steer them toward a website, to reward them. In traditional transmedia or ARG, this would further the narrative (a la Lost) – but what about this being an opportunity for a giveaway? The first XYZ people who land on the site win – a gift certificate to iTunes, a round-trip from JetBlue, an exclusive shirt from the Gap. Multiple brands could participate throughout the text, and degrees of difficulty would correspond to the prizes. To keep people trying – stagger the victories, every 20th person, a la the days of calling a radio station for concert tickets.
This type of living product placement was (kinda) experimented with by KFC. But the reward was minimal, and it was an interruptive effort to make you watch a dull spot. If this type of content is alive within good narrative, game on. It plays with our impulse to poke signs and symbols – for ‘real’ reward. DVDs could even have different cookies than the content as seen in the first go round.
Content needs financing and brands need engagement – I see opportunity herein. Over the past few years there has always been talk about inserting hypertext into film and video narrative – you roll over the dress worn by a Gossip Girl and are then fed info and a link. While this makes sense on paper, and seems to mimic current behavior, it’s banal. We wanna hunt and kill our prey. We are unwitting gamers, hoping to challenge and reward our inner detective, even if only for five minutes.
A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole.
-Henry Jenkins
I saw the below vid last week and can’t get it off my mind cause it portends where transmedia planning could go. There is still so much space that narrative has not yet intersected with our everyday life. People’s Court and Quiz Shows were the 1st step, Real World and Survivor was the 2nd and now the space of ARGs is slowing beginning the 3rd, one which blurs the genres of narrative/gameshow/reality.
At Desedo we’ve penned a single-camera narrative series through which to explore this framework, below are some notes from our whiteboard, would welcome feedback (perpetual beta, of course).
Fall Down, Walk Up
Alex Tyler, a 33-year-old law grad who never passed the bar, has spent the last eight years job-hopping and playing second fiddle to her Wall Street husband. To date it’s been a posh but empty life. When her marriage implodes, Alex winds up broke, humiliated and living in a seedy midtown apt. Now at the bottom of the NYC food chain, she stumbles her way back up working in the billion-dollar maze of Manhattan real estate.
How far could this go? What if Lost‘s Hanso Foundation actually existed? Or you could hire the law firm from Boston Legal? Or buy property from the Fall Down, Walk Up real estate brokerage?
Alex Tyler’s brand association with real estate would not just be a form of product placement – the actress playing her would either be integrated into the fabric of an actual company, or we could create a ‘real’ real estate company through which she would host open houses and sell property – off camera, wholly legal (real), yet within narrative (fake).
Once we jump offscreen and into the physical landscape of NYC, Fall Down, Walk Up further enables the casual viewer to interact with narrative. Thanks to Seinfeld, thousands of tourists visit Tom’s Diner on the Upper West Side. Imagine if, as part of Jason Alexander’s contract with NBC, he ate three meals each year at the diner in character as George Costanza. No cameras, just a blurry world in which neither the media nor the fans know what is ‘real’. People would approach him as Jason, yet he would respond as George. Within this territory of incredulity and confusion, once captured and sent via cameraphone/text/ twitter, you would further draw people into the narrative – and the following week George commenting to Jerry about the strange people calling him Jason.
Like Jason Alexander at Tom’s Diner, NYC locations could be populated with characters in ‘reality’ from Fall Down, Walk Up – Alex’s co-workers, her coffee shop, her dog run. The waiter at Nobu on whom she is crushing would also actually work at Nobu. Talent would be hired to remain in character not just on set, but 24/7, and like Lonely Girl, the talent would have to begin as unknowns. Slowly it could create a space in which people can intersect with and potentially influence the narrative.
IMHO, this is a next step, beyond Pimp My Ride, voting on American Idol or spoiling Survivor. Beyond the technical intricacies and legal loops, it ultimately relies upon participation, so is this fertile ground for real fans?
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It’s a Friday night and Alex Tyler is at her local bar. A young man asks “Aren’t you an actress on that series?” Alex responds with a sly look “No…I sell real estate; but wanna buy me drink?”
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(HT to Yianni for the vid)
If the US Department of Transportation stepped through a looking glass to hire someone from Runwayland, who would it be? While considering this deep thought, I realized that Karl’s personal style (sunglasses/gloves/tie/wearing lots of Hedi Slimane) may have greater mass culture fame than the garments he himself creates. The visage outpaces the artist. This is the Karl that we see in Grand Theft Auto IV, and while I doubt that many gamers know his body of work, they recognize his body and assent that yes, indeed, he is a fashion icon.
