ercles on 22/4/2007 at 11:02
Although I am horribly late to the game with this topic, there isn't anything around that I could find so...
It seems that old Captain Trent from NIN has cooked up a terrific idea in his new cd "Year Zero".
It sort of reminds me of what they did in the lead up to Uru. Trent has been dropping clues on his Tour t-shirts, flash drives left in bathrooms, billboards in London, and all over the internet to spark interest in his new cd.
The whole idea is that this album presents Trent's opinion on what America will be like 15 years down the track if it keeps going the way it is. From what I have been reading he has actually been putting an amazing amount of effort into the whole storyline.
Between the cd and all the other mediums he is trying to create an "Alternate Reality Game" (not really sure what it means so don't ask) which is set to continue for at least another year after the cd. Check out (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(album)) the wiki entry on this one for all the info, its pretty cool.
Although he is strongly against calling it marketing, this whole thing has apparently generated a lot of dough for Mr. Reznor, I wonder whether we will see more of this harnessing of the online community from other bands in the future...
Vigil on 22/4/2007 at 11:14
I assume the projected future involves an exceedingly wealthy Trent Reznor saying "I told you so".
Tonamel on 22/4/2007 at 17:45
Quote Posted by ercles
he is trying to create an "Alternate Reality Game" (not really sure what it means so don't ask)
An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is a story that's fully interactive. The characters have blogs. You can email them, they'll email back. There have been "press meetings" for fictitious companies, and funerals for dead characters.
It's a pretty interesting medium, but I'm biased since I make them for a living.
The NIN arg is being run by 42 Entertainment, who also ran the ilovebees promotion for Halo 2.
jay pettitt on 22/4/2007 at 18:02
\o/ I love bees!!!
henke on 22/4/2007 at 18:39
Which ones have you made Tonamel?
ZylonBane on 22/4/2007 at 19:37
Quote Posted by Tonamel
An Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is LARPing.
Fixed that for ya.
Tonamel on 22/4/2007 at 19:39
I work with (
http://www.studiocypher.com/) Studio Cypher. We make shorter, subscription-based ARGs (ie, our games aren't marketing campaigns). We're taking a break to finish some contracting projects (like (
http://www.swi.indiana.edu/ludium02.htm) Ludium 2), but hope to be back to running games in the public sphere before the summer's out.
[edit] ZB, not really. LARPs generally have some sort of abstract rules set the players have to follow. In ARGs, pretty much the only rule is "please don't hack our servers," though even that isn't always the case. Also, in LARPs, you pretend to be someone else and play the game using that person's powers/abilities, but with ARGs, you are yourself, and you use your own skills to play the game.
Aja on 22/4/2007 at 23:32
I like how we actually label it "viral marketing" these days, as if that somehow makes us immune to its effects.
Matthew on 23/4/2007 at 09:21
Quote Posted by Tonamel
I work with (
http://www.studiocypher.com/) Studio Cypher ... but hope to be back to running games in the public sphere before the summer's out.
If you didn't get registered for the Boat Game in time in the last case, were you effectively screwed?
ZylonBane on 23/4/2007 at 12:13
Quote Posted by Aja
I like how we actually label it "viral marketing" these days, as if that somehow makes us immune to its effects.
I like how they give diseases names these days, as if that somehow makes us immune to their effects.
