Explaining these long complex story narratives that stretch over the course of months can be tricky so I’m grateful for this great 5 minute summary of “Terminator: Dark Discovery” that Michael Verdi has edited together for our company’s website:
In addition to that, here’s a video clip in which I explain a bit more about the concepts and execution of the WWE and Terminator alternate reality experiences here’s a clip from our panel at ARGfest:
For the record, I call them “Alternate Reality Experiences” rather than “games” because I don’t believe the puzzles elements are a core element to these projects, but rather the interactive experience, entertainment, and engagement.
Lance Weiler, the film director behind The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma, has organized an interesting discussion series across the US that is called “DIY Days” (Do-it-Yourself Days). The series of live conferences / discussions known as DIY DAYS is happening in LA, SF, Boston, NYC and London. According to Lance, their goal is to explore filmmakers and storytellers in this day of shifting film distribution systems. Presented by From Here to Awesome and Current TV - DIY DAYS aims to answer these questions with a day of panels, roundtable discussions and workshops: A look at how to fund, create, and distribute and sustain.
Here’s the panel I’ll be appearing on at 111 Minna in SF this Sunday:
2:15 to 3:15pm
PANEL: The art and science of crowdsourcing
There is power in the crowd. When they rise up they can fund, create, distribute and promote. But how do you turn an audience into an active community where members become collaborators? Panelists: Slava Rubin (indieGoGo), Skot Leach (Lost Zombie), Jason Harris (Mekanism), Bryan Kennedy (Mobmov.org), Blair Erickson (Millions of Us) Discussion Leader: Lance Weiler
During development of Playstation Home, our company has created some pretty amazing experiences in this exciting new entertainment medium. I was lucky enough to play a creative role in all three of the spaces on display in this video from Game Trailers, the main Home Square (US), Warhawk, and Uncharted (which was my baby heh). Check it out:
Jack Buser, the Director of Playstation home posted this message to let those of you curious to check out Home take a peek early. Obviously we’re all very excited to share it with you and thrilled to see some of our work on display at this early stage.
Today we’re announcing the expansion of our closed beta test for PlayStation Home to begin at the end of the month.
Later today, the PLAYSTATION Store will be updated with a PlayStation Home theme. By downloading the theme, users are submitting an application to join the PlayStation Home Beta test community. We will be using a variety of criteria including activity on the PLAYSTATION Network to determine eligibility for the Beta community. Existing beta testers have automatically qualified to be part of the expanded beta.
Several current MoU employees and alumni including myself, Lauren Lamonica, and Adrian Herbez studied “Building Virtual Worlds” and did research work and independent studies for Stage 3 under Randy Pausch at Carnegie-Mellon University. Though he’s now famous for his celebrated speech and autobiographical bestseller “The Last Lecture” about his battle with cancer, he should also be remembered and cheered for his pioneering work in virtual reality and 3-D social experience research. I believe it’s no coincidence that so many of my colleagues in that class went on to become leaders in our industry. It is my firm belief that they will carry on Randy’s legacy.
This article from io9 is an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of Alternate Reality Gaming campaigns and how they work (or don’t). Many of the points they make are things I think I agree with, specifically about relying too much on puzzles and schwag and not enough on compelling storytelling.
Here’s some key quotes:
Lost is running an ARG at Comic-Con this week where the fictional Dharma corporation tries to recruit new employees, and the Sarah Connor Chronicles had a tie-in ARG that was quite artful in which employees of the Enitech Corporation discover a camera that takes pictures of the future and predicts the rise of the machines.
One reason I liked the Sarah Connor Chronicles ARG so much was that it actually functioned as its own, compelling story. It was almost like the Heroes webisodes – stories set in the same universe as their parent story, but shorter and with a lower budget. The Dark Knight ARG, on the other hand, felt like it really was just advertising with a few perfunctory interactive bits thrown in.
Well I’m glad the author dug our work and I can’t complain about having our project called “artful.” He makes some good points and I’m glad this discussion is going on now. ARGs are walking the fine line between art, entertainment, and advertising, so it’s important to start pushing these questions out there.
I’m part of a panel at ARGfest this weekend talking about Extended Media Experiences and specifically my work on Terminator. Here’s a summary of what we’re discussing:
ARGs and Extended Media Experiences -
Connecting ARGs with marketing can be both an amazing challenge and an amazing experience for both player and puppetmaster. The members of this panel are uniquely poised to offer insight into the various ways that ARGs can be used to generate buzz and excitement for other media properties, as well as the challenges and hurdles required to navigate the terrain of expanding copyrighted properties, such as TV shows, video games, and movies.
Joining me will be moderator Evan Jones owner of Stitch Media (who I worked with on Terminator and recently Holomove), Yomi Ayeni the Creative Director of Expanding Universe, Elan Lee founder of 4th Wall Studios, and Lance Weiler director of the movie “The Last Broadcast.” Should be an awesome discussion!
As a Creative Director at Millions of Us, I’ve had the opportunity to work on some really amazing and exciting projects. From what some have already figured out, and as reported by Virtual Worlds News in March, our company, has been working to create spaces for Playstation Home the last several months. The idea is to create some really cutting edge virtual and social experiences in this new 3D world, for some of the biggest titles in the video game world.
Yesterday at E3, some footage of this work was unveiled to the general public for the first time:
This is one of those highly top secret projects I’ve been dying to tell people about, but had to remain absolutely silent about until launch. Well, as of Wednesday last week the cat is out of the bag and all over the press. Google has entered the virtual world social space and we’re a part of the project.
For the past few months, I’ve had a very exciting chance to be a creative role during the development of experiences in an awesome new virtual tool by Google called “Lively.”
This ambitious browser based app aims to do for 3-D virtual social experiences what YouTube does for video. It lets you create your own space inside it and then embed that space on any webpage (or blog post as you’ll see at the bottom of this one).
Lively by Google is the media, and as creative director for this project myself along with the project producer Eliana Sur (from Terminator) teamed up with our client National Geographic Channel to bring you the first of many experiences this product will offer. Last week we launched National Geographic Channel’s LA Hard Hats into Livelyby Google.
Eliana Sur as her Lively avatar - a cartoon pirate dog
Lively enables users to visit, chat, and interact in a catalogue of 3D spaces, each space having its own unique style and experience. Users can customize their own space to add to the catalogue and share their spaces with friends. Creating a space can be as easy as picking a room shell, decorating it with objects from the Google 3D Warehouse, and naming your space. Integration with YouTube and Picasa Web allow users to stream video content and display photos right in their 3D environment. Evangelizing your freshly created Lively experience is important and this is simple as well. By adding a short piece of html code located under the room window, you can embed the space on any website, indicating this platform has great potential for viral content distribution. Lastly, and most importantly I would argue, Google’s scale and distribution places this product firmly in a category all its own.
To inaugurate this new product, Millions of Us has teamed up with National Geographic Channel to create an experience in Lively based on the LA Hard Hats series premiering Sunday, August 3rd at 9 pm. I’m thrilled to say that we’re a participant in the Preferred Developer Program for Lively by Google, and that the L.A. Hardhats room is the first branded space in Lively. The television series chronicles the heavy-duty work of a construction crew as they build an LA high-rise for nearly 2 years. Our interactive Lively experience captures the best features of Lively while immersing the user in the LA Hard Hats story. Download the Lively application, create an avatar, and come see what this experience is all about by clicking here or on the embedded room at the bottom of this page! Then, grab a hard hat, some caution tape, a couple of barricades, and the LA Hard Hats room shell and create your own custom “under construction” Lively room. Or, you can just steal ours by grabbing the code.
Thanks to Eliana Sur (our extraordinary Producer and writer of much of this cribbed blog post), Ted Tagami (business wiz who made the Google connection happen), Adrian Herbez (incredible programmer who pushed the product to the limit and then found new limits), Kes Quinn (the artist who built an entire skyscaper), and the rest of the whole team at Millions of Us.
