42 entertainment
glassdoor gives you an inside look at what it' s like to work at 42 entertainment, including salaries, reviews, office photos, and more. this is the 42 entertainment company profile. all content is posted anonymously by employees working at 42 entertainment .
end ,
says susan bonds, the president of 42 entertainment .
but we always expecte
alex lieu, susan bonds, and jordan weisman of 42 entertainment, which pioneered alternate reality games. photo: robert maxwell
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date approached, the game hit the peer - to - peer sites and regained its momentum. reznor and the team from 42 entertainment had a
42 entertainment creates immersive entertainment that invites audiences to participate in connected experiences. rooted in digital, our fully integrated campaigns leverage our 10 years of experience to engage millions, from the most casual to the most obsessive .
rscope chair jimmy iovine — reznor & apos; s label boss at universal music at the time — called weisman to talk about buying 42 entertainment .
you touched upon this in your talk yesterday, but 42 entertainment has previously done a lot of marketing work, and you guys are just now starting to move away from marketing with edoc laundry. but from the website, it doesn' t actually look like edoc is a part of 42 entertainment at all .
© 2018 green apple entertainment, inc. legal | digital marketing by seo smooth
42 entertainment has made a name for itself in recent years by running some of the best movie args ever. it’s the company behind the quintessential viral campaign for
so your official position at 42 is
vice president of experience design .
the biggest successes are when the alternate - reality games help spread the word about a bigger product, such as a movie. 42 entertainment recently created campaigns for the dark knight film, the sony game resistance 2, and year zero, the nine inch nails album. big brand companies such as microsoft or film companies hire 42 entertainment to make these ephemeral games that last only as long as the campaigns do. bonds says 42 entertainment likes to choose campaigns where a deep storyline can be woven in .
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prodigy, who made up one half of mobb deep, has recently died at 42 .
42 entertainment pioneered the alternate - reality game. mixing real - life with a fictional story, these games are viral marketing campaigns for a variety of media. now 42 has created a new alternate - reality game for the international, a new film starring clive owen and naomi watts .
for three years, stewart has been the chief writer at a game development house called 42 entertainment, the leaders in a nascent gaming genre that fans have dubbed alternate reality games, or args .
prodigy, who made up one half of mobb deep, died in june. he was 42 .
the rapper prodigy, who made up one half of the group mobb deep, has died aged 42 .
, args are among the first entertainment forms genuinely native to the net, culture watchers say. unlike the online cartoons or games that differ little from their offline counterparts, args like 42 entertainment' s just - completed
last call poker
are woven from the fragmented, deeply community - driven fabric of the web itself .
emotional speech in the context of entertainment robots. the effect of different emotions on users’ perceptions - ieee conference publication
, which supposedly tested you to see if you could participate in the “human preservation project”. now we know that the site is from prominent viral marketing company 42 entertainment, which raises the question of what this campaign is really promoting .
federation entertainment has finalised a deal with belgian distributor ella productions and prodco left field ventures, for the police cybercrime tv series unit 42. as part of the deal, federation has secured worldwide distribution rights to the series, whilst ella productions retains rights for benelux and france. the announcement was made today by lionel uzan, managing director and co - founder, federation entertainment .
susan bonds is co - founder and ceo of 42 entertainment, leading the innovation evolution, from alternate reality games to deeply immersive entertainment experiences that engage millions of people worldwide, susan has focused 42 to take advantage of what she calls
true convergence
- the social, technological, gaming and story alignment that enables 42 to give you a role in the dark knight, halo, the human preservation project, or nin' s year zero on an unprecedented scale. starting with ilovebees, susan has developed / produced all of 42' s transmedia experiences, including the critically acclaimed why so serious? , year zero, flynn lives, the human preservation project, mouth - taped - shut, the vanishing point and, most recently, random acts of fusion .
42 entertainment' s
year zero
campaign for trent reznor and nine inch nails also earned the top accolade for viral advertising, and
sol comments ,
a banner campaign for scandinavia online from mediafront oslo, earned the grand prix for online advertising .
new york—rapper prodigy, a member of the hardcore new york hip - hop duo mobb deep, has died. he was 42 .
so, how do we know this is a 42e campaign? the seattle weekly website has a qr code advertisement that links to the tsn website. this ad is filed under “ad index > entertainment > concerts, festivals & events > 42 entertainment”, which pokes another hole in our theory, since i’m pretty sure chewing gum wouldn’t be classified as a concert, festival, or event, no matter how good it is .
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how could this work for year zero? reznor had spent a long time thinking and writing about the future dystopia he imagined. now he wanted to share this story with his fans. he filled in the contact form on 42 entertainment & apos; s web site and clicked send .
42 entertainment hope to rank high on the pop culture scale. the company develops alternate reality games (args) that blend online and offline content to market movies, video games, album releases, and new software products. args encourage players to hunt for clues on web sites ...
at 42 entertainment, panic set in .
it & apos; s a silent contract ,
explains steve peters, the game designer charged with tracking player progress .
we respect you — which means we & apos; re not going to lead you along by the nose and then not give you anything .
entertainment & apos; s creative director .
so were we. trent was stunned. and the whole time we were thinking, & apos; when is so
42 entertainment thrives on innovation, and creativity. we are expert problem solvers constantly looking for new ways to surprise and entertain. there is no challenge too ambitious for us to tackle. if it' s never been done before, then even better. we don' t just dream big - we make big things happen .
programming for the global marketplace. a fully - integrated television studio, federation entertainment is comprised of exclusive partnerships with several of the industry’s most celebrated executives, producers and showrunners. established by leading french entertainment executive pascal breton, federation is run by managing director and partner lionel uzan and founding partners david michel, stéphane sperry & serge hayat .
directed by guy goossens, unit 42 is based on an original story by annie carels who also co - wrote the series alongside julie bertrand, charlotte joulia and guy goossens .
the incredible team that brought the flynn lives experience to life from flynn' s arcade through end of line club and won a themed entertainment (thea) award for their efforts .
johnny rodriguez is responsible for all things visual at 42 entertainment. from custom graphics and mysterious web sites, to the full - scale street murals that have suddenly appeared in places like london and hollywood, his pieces often serve as standalone art works in addition to the role they play as storytelling vehicles for 42' s various projects. johnny leads a diverse team of visual designers who are responsible for all online, print, event, media, mobile, environmental and collectible graphic design. prior to 42, johnny was part of the original team at disney online in 1995, designing kid - friendly web sites as well as sites for hollywood records' rock and r & b; artists. he left disney for
i am here as a game designer. i think that one of the directions we really want to take 42 in is as an entertainment provider, much more so than, or even in lieu of, being a marketing agency. and with a lot of our new designs, the trend lately has really been to push things in that direction. you see that in
attract massive participation. alex believes transmedia entertainment is a true art form and loves innovative storytelling. prior to 42, alex was the founder and chief creative at 3pin media - a new media entertainment agency serving clients like microsoft, warner brothers, boeing, espn, nickelodeon, abc, disney, and more - the vice president of creative at lightspan inc. working on innovative learning solutions - creative director at mutation labs, and one of the founding members of disney online where his team pioneered the very first use of flash for web design, animation and game development .
this sort of game draws some seriously committed players, who solve problems collectively over the internet. the best games spread by word of mouth as friends enlist each other to help. quite often, the alternate - reality games draw casual observers who number in the millions. the challenge, says susan bonds, chief executive of 42 entertainment, is to get more people directly involved .
42 entertainment also ran the vanishing point campaign for the launch of microsoft windows vista. that campaign kicked off with a secret message that was embedded as a light show on the famous water fountains of the bellagio hotel in las vegas. right now, the company has 25 people and works with a lot of outside contractors. that’s amazingly small, considering how big the campaigns are .
technology aligns with experience design as 42 always puts the player first. from left to right: hyun kim - software developer, kevin burkhardt - chief technology officer, sara raasch - experience engineer
prodigy (left), born albert johnson, has died at age 42. he and havoc, born, kejuan muchita, broke out onto the music scene as mobb deep in the 1990s
others have also tried alternate - reality games. jane mcgonigal, who worked with 42 entertainment, went off on her own and created world without oil, a game about what would happen if the world ran out of oil. the success of these games is not in how many players they draw, but in how much attention they can drum up for the particular target of the campaign .
the team left microsoft to form 42 entertainment shortly afterward and was immediately rehired to promote the company' s
halo 2
game. the team created another sprawling story called
i love bees
( after the game' s first fake web site), telling it through an online radio drama and puzzles that drove players to real - life phone booths to answer characters' calls .
at the end of may, she led an open forum featuring prominent innovators in emerging media and arts from across the world, such as robert terceck, the former president of own: the oprah winfrey network, and susan bonds, co - founder and ceo of 42 entertainment, a prominent alternate reality video game company, in order to gauge what the industry expects from future arts graduates .
think of ourselves as a game company, and we think of ourselves as an entertainment company, and a storytelling company .
and to prove it, we' re going to talk about our games in that forum, and we' re going to other industry leaders in that forum, and the things you see from 42 as we move forward into 2007 will very much embrace that thinking .
double life stewart' s office shelves tell the story of his double life. a row of his novels has as bookends the prestigious trophies he' s won for several of them, including the 2000 world fantasy award. next to them is a copy of microsoft' s
halo 2
game, which one of 42 entertainment' s args helped launch. he has never opened it .
based in pasadena, california, and the bay area, 42 entertainment sports an all - star team of marketing and gaming vets whose experience runs from procter & gamble product launches to designing rides for disneyland. arg, they believe, is the next frontier – and their mind - bending online campaigns for the likes of dreamworks, microsoft and disney are often more compelling than the products being pushed .
, and you' ll see more books from 42 coming out next year. we' ve said
okay, there' s a subscription model ,
which as i was talking about yesterday ,
pushing the boundaries of traditional entertainment and social gaming while re - defining the ruless of digital and real - world play, alex serves as both creative director and lead experience design director for 42 entertainment' s award winning projects. from sending scores of batman fans to mysterious locations where mobile phones were buried inside joker - themed cakes, to leading players through a scary dilapidated warehouse leading to an ultra - secret nine inch nails performance, alex is constantly searching for new ways to immerse audiences and weave them into fiction. he pioneered immersive storytelling techniques that blend the digital and real to create
events
in fictional worlds that
after 42 years together, the couple were married new year' s eve, liz smith reported friday in the chicago tribune. people and others confirmed tuesday that it was a private ceremony in los angeles .
example 42: a belgian, on holiday or on business, in the baltic countries arrives at riga airport and picks up a car hired for two weeks, latvian vat will be charged on the hire .
just don’t call it marketing. “the term ‘marketing’ sure is a frustrating one for me, ” nin mastermind trent reznor recently blogged. (he and reps from 42 entertainment declined to be interviewed .) “what you are now starting to experience is ‘year zero, ’ ” reznor wrote. “it’s not some kind of gimmick to get you to buy a record – it is the art form... and we’re just getting started. ”
audiences are becoming increasingly adept at filtering out traditional advertising. we help cut the clutter by creating entertainment destinations that give your audience a role in the story. we create brand experiences that people' want' to interact with and share .
truly great immersive entertainment comes from the right balance of creativity and technology. from the web and mobile, to physical installations and custom applications, we build digital solutions that deliver best - in - class experiences that work across all channels .
after every gig, reznor rushed back to his hotel so he could watch the action on fan forums and in chat rooms unfold on his laptop .
i couldn & apos; t wait ,
reznor says .
& apos; did they find it? did they find it? & apos; i know it sounds nerdy, but it was exciting .
the 42 entertainment team, working out of a cramped loft in downtown pasadena, california, kept an eve
weisman had long been working toward that moment. severely dyslexic as a kid, his world changed when he was introduced to dungeons & dragons .
here was entertainment that involved problem solving and was story - based and social ,
he says
in this oct. 13, 2016 file photo, mobb deep' s prodigy poses for a photo in new york. albert johnson, the skilled rapper and member of the new york hip - hop duo has died. he was 42 .
42 entertainment was founded in 2003 by jordan weisman, bonds and joe dinunzio. it was self - funded and never raised money. they made the first alternate - reality game, the beast, for steven spielberg’s ai movie. the 2001 campaign started with a “rabbit hole, ” or a clue in the form of a web site that rolled by with the credits of a film. that led gamers through a mystery that they had to solve collectively. the campaign was such a novelty at the time that media coverage resulted in more than 300 million recorded impressions .
one of the most memorable alternate - reality games is microsoft’s 2004 “ ilovebees ” campaign for the xbox game halo 2. in that campaign, 42 entertainment arranged to have 50, 000 pay phones ring across the country at exactly the same time. fans answered the phones, recorded the messages, and pieced the audio into a six - hour broadcast about the topic of the game, the invasion of earth by the alien race the covenant. while a small number of people participated, more than 2. 5 million people watched. that campaign won a variety of awards, including a webby .
currently in production, unit 42, is produced by john engel, ceo of left field ventures (in association with rtbf – belgian television), who over the years has worked with renowned filmmakers such as brian depalma, tim burton, neil jordan, and joel schumacher, to mention a few .
stewart, on a sunny november afternoon here, is improvising inside a sophisticated online game that has put him and his co - creators squarely at the leading edge of the digital entertainment world. the fact that he has almost no experience with traditional video games makes his pioneering role here all the more striking .
an enormous amount of creativity, effort, and dedication goes into pulling off the amazing work that comes out of 42e. our specialized team is comprised of experts in every area of entertainment, design, and production - - all working in tandem to create the most socially engaging, immersive experiences in the world .
campaign, which i' m sure you' re familiar with. what were your thoughts about that campaign? since a lot of people from the start were assuming it was 42. but at a certain point, it started getting sloppy, and people began reconsidering whether or not it was something actually put together by the
if people are no longer content to passively consume entertainment, they' re certainly not going to passively consume marketing messages. instead of pushing messages out to consumers, brands need to think about how to get audiences to engage with the message and spread it themselves. if you just want people to listen, they won' t .
raymund served as the managing director, global networks asia - pacific from 2007 to 2011, heading the entertainment channels division of nbc universal across 33 countries. before that, raymund spent a year in manila as the president / ceo of nation broadcasting corporation (92. 3xfm) and head of strategy and content for mediaquest holdings, inc .
michael borys leads the interactive design team at 42 entertainment - responsible for all online, mobile and real - world puzzles, games and social activities. from scores of casual game found throughout 42e' s projects such as tron' s' space paranoids' and the dark knight' s' sitting ducks', to amazing real life collaborative scavenger hunts like the one held in the dead of night on alcatraz island, michael always strives to give the audiences new experiences in fun. from 1996 to 2000, he led various teams within the disney company and helped in the creation of the original disney' s daily blast online. in 2000, michael teamed up with alex lieu at 3pinmedia
the only clue to the clip’s provenance is a road sign that flashes past so quickly you have to hit pause to make it out: i am trying to believe. there’s no music, no credits. nothing to indicate that it is, in fact, a teaser for nine inch nails ‘ new album, year zero. the clip, and dozens of other online clues, form the latest salvo in a burgeoning new style of promo called alternate - reality gaming (arg). part scavenger hunt, part online game, these elaborate puzzles are created by a clandestine startup called 42 entertainment. the goal: to blend fiction and reality in ways that engage a new generation of fans .
we can always get massive press coverage in the enthusiast press ,
said chris di cesare, the director of marketing for microsoft' s game studios .
but even a game like' halo' isn' t guaranteed coverage in the new york times or entertainment weekly. we were able to reach an audience beyond what we could ordinarily get .
pittard sullivan, the award - winning la design shop, where he led design efforts for fox family and the military channel. he later partnered with alex lieu at 3 pin media, joining 42 when the two firms merged in 2005. outside of 42, johnny is known as kmndz, a signature artist in la' s pop surrealist art scene. he took his name from the keystroke combination
command z
- because he thinks we could all use an
undo
button in life. his work has been shown at the thinkspace and merry karnowsky galleries in los angeles, fifty24sf and the shooting gallery in san francisco, the leonard street gallery in london, and england' s bristol city museum .
as for 42 entertainment' s viral winner ,
year zero ,
an alternate reality game that incorporated websites, e - mails, merchandising and pre - recorded phone messages to expand the dystopian storyline behind trent reznor' s concept album of the same name, she said that
if the conversation has been ongoing about the blurring of the lines between mediums, what we need to come out of this was a way forward. in this piece what we have is just that. it takes every medium, every skill at its best - - print, outdoor, design, events. it couldn' t exist without being virally spread. it' s this collaborative development where there' s a skill and a craft around engaging audiences .
as a systems engineer by training, she first worked in aerospace at lockheed' s advanced development projects - the famed
skunk works
- before beginning her career in experiential narrative at walt disney imagineering in 1990 .
disneyland is about bringing stories to life ,
she says .
that' s also true about our multi - platform experiences - you are the star of the story .
as an imagineer, she developed / produced the ground - breaking indiana jones adventure at disneyland and mission: space at epcot. following disney, she spent two years producing a massively multiplayer online (mmo) game at cyan worlds - the company behind riven and myst, two of the most popular pc games of all time - before launching 42 entertainment in 2004 .
stewart didn' t invent this kind of game - - that honor goes, as much as to any one person, to the ceo of his company, jordan weisman, who first brought the team together while at microsoft in 2001. elan lee, a former video game producer and 42' s chief designer, has served as the games' equivalent of a movie director .
is 42' s very first experiment in a product. our dream is, of course, that we want our own intellectual property, and we want to promote our own ideas, and we want to create something start - to - finish that does not support another property. you know, why don' t we just try to run the whole show, at least once ?
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in early 2001, weisman was creative director of microsoft' s entertainment group. he' d persuaded steven spielberg (and a reluctant microsoft) to experiment with an unconventional game to help market the director' s
a. i .
movie, and had already tapped lee to direct the project they code - named
the beast .
soon after, they recruited stewart to be their writer .
42west’s entertainment marketing division, co - headed by leslee dart and amanda lundberg, provides expert marketing direction, public - relations counsel and media strategy for productions (including theatrical films, dvd and vod releases, television programs, and online series) as well as content producers (ranging from individual filmmakers and creative artists to production companies, film financiers, dvd distributors, and countless other entities in our ever - changing, multi - platform world) .
most fans didn & apos; t realize their progress was being monitored nonstop. unlike less interactive forms of entertainment, args require a close collaboration between the puppet masters — the unseen figures who create the story — and the audience .
the makers and the consumers are in a tango ,
stewart says .
it & apos; s a dance, it & apos; s passionate, and sometimes there are sinister overtones. it creates a unique dynamic .
“the eighteen - to - thirty - five - year - old demo has grown up in a marketing - saturated environment and has developed a sophisticated set of tools for avoiding the vast majority of marketing messages, ” jordan weisman, 42’s co - founder, has said. “as a rule of thumb, the bigger the neon sign, the faster they’ll run the other way. so the premise here was, instead of shouting, go the opposite way and whisper. ”
we have employees in common, but that' s about as far as it goes. although, edoc was based on many of the learnings that came from 42, so as far as how to build a cool mystery, and how to tell a cool story. it' s just that in this case, i met up with a bunch of my friends in the clothing industry that said
ooh, we want to play too .
so we started this new company .
over the next five years, e - commerce could become an even more important retail channel in china. private online consumption is projected to surge by 20% annually through 2020, compared with 6% annual growth in off - line retail sales. this means that e - commerce will account for 42% of growth in private consumption. by then, china’s online consumer market will have grown to $ 1. 6 trillion annually—24% of private consumption. (see exhibit 3. )
well, the idea behind vice president of experience design, the term
experience design ,
was when i was sorta forced to sit down and think about what i do, i thought that probably the most important thing that i do is control how our users, how our players, experience the entertainment: how they experience a story, how they experience a strange narrative. and i thought if i focus on that, that probably encompasses more of what i do than any other term i can think of .
one reason is that wealthier consumers spend a disproportionately greater share of their incomes on services than do lower - income consumers. although the average income of upper - middle - class and affluent households is 2. 5 times higher than that of emerging - middle - and middle - class households, the wealthier spend 3. 3 times more on education, culture, and entertainment. still, upper - middle - class and affluent households spend only 1. 8 times more on physical goods than emerging - middle and middle - class consumers .
el: when i was at microsoft, i was terribly miscast as a producer. i thought, hey, this is what i should be doing. then i met jordan weisman, who was the creative director of the games group there. jordan is my mentor. jordan is the most creative, amazing person i’ve ever met. we sort of hit it off, and we had this discussion about the future of games one day. i remember we were sitting at this restaurant, eating sushi, and at that moment his phone rang. he looked at me and said, wouldn’t it be cool if that was a game calling me right now? and that’s kind of where it all started. when we started talking about that, jordan realized, you suck at producing, and he moved me to the design role, and from there we met with spielberg and created ai, and from there we created 42 entertainment, and from there we started edoc laundry, the t - shirt company, and it’s just been this crazy snowball of events since then, finding this bizarre talent that i have that would be absolutely useless in any other field .
research by the boston consulting group and aliresearch, the research arm of alibaba, china’s largest e - commerce company, found that these three forces of change will profoundly reshape china’s economy and consumer market over the next five years. through 2020, 81% of consumption growth will come from households whose annual income is more than $ 24, 000. furthermore, consumers 35 or younger will account for 65% of growth. e - commerce will become a far more important retail channel, driving 42% of total consumption growth, 90% of that growth coming from mobile e - commerce .
whereas a company like 42 is much smaller and much more experimental. we can afford to make a product, make a ton of mistakes, and then iterate. one of the reasons that i think our fans are enamored with the quality of our products is because we' ve learned those lessons early on. we' ve been doing this for three, four years now and we' ve made tons and tons of mistakes, and we' re getting really good at not making those mistakes, again because we can afford to try and iterate and do it again and again and again, in a way that a company like microsoft with
young - generation chinese spend more than their elders. most chinese older than 35 have lived through periods of instability and have experienced challenging economic circumstances. they are known to be frugal. the young generation is more motivated to spend. our data shows that upper - middle - class consumers 35 and younger average 40% higher spending, across a range of product categories, than last - generation consumers with similar incomes. in a recent bcg global consumer survey, 42% of chinese aged 18 to 25 disagreed with the statement, “i feel i have enough things and feel less the need to buy new ones. ” by comparison, 36% of u. s. and eu respondents of that age - group, 32% of japanese, and only 26% of brazilians also disagreed with the statement .
why so serious ?
was designed as a 360° alternate reality experience that played out over 15 months leading up to the release of the dark knight. spilling out over a multitude of different platforms, this deep immersive campaign recruited the audience to become real citizens of gotham city. over 11 million unique participants in over 75 countries fueled the rise of the joker as henchmen, campaigned for harvey dent to get elected as district attorney, and even took the law into their own hands by becoming copycat batman vigilantes. from calling phone numbers written in the sky, to hunting down gps coordinates to find mobile phones baked inside of birthday cakes ,
why so serious ?
was an experience like no other. as these fans collectively scoured the globe in search of clues, their incredible passion generated billions of impressions in the press and blogosphere setting a new benchmark for immersive entertainment .
um, it was
vice president of design ,
it was just
founder ,
it was
interactive design ,
it was... you know. because we' ve got one of those strange companies where no one has a classic title, or a classic role, our titles are very fluid. ultimately, we' ve got to just put something on the business cards, so we' re sorta forced into that corner .
if you cut up all our projects into two basic elements, there' s always the story, and the way that story is delivered. that' s really rough, obviously. there' s a million more parts, but let' s call it those two parts. my role is to orchestrate that second part. my role is to take really cool stories and find ways to put them in front of people in ways that they' ve never experienced before .
no, it' s a completely standalone entity, actually, with different founders, and a different financial model .
so in terms of commercializing arg' s, in one way you' ve taken it to a completely different company. but
so cathy' s book was our very first attempt at that, because the problem with that is
oh my god, how do you make money off something like that ?
so we' ve broken it into three basic models. you can have a product - -
tried to do, but ultimately may not be appropriate for this kind of product. you' ll see some creative interpretations of the subscription model coming out next year, but ultimately it' s experimental. and i have my own healthy doubts about it .
and the third one is product placement, or banner ads, or things like that. ad revenue, basically, and i think that is probably the best fit. but it' s different from movies or tv. we' ve all seen really bad product placement in tv and movies. it looks so fake and so contrived. but if you think of an arg, the whole point of an arg is to engage the audience member in kind of this bizarre
trust dance ,
this concept where they want desperately to believe that this stuff is real because it makes it more fun, and the role of an arg is to do everything in its power to make them not feel stupid about taking that leap with us. and we are in this bizarre position where product placement actually enhances that. if the characters in your story are doing real things, are going to a restaurant that actually exists, that makes the game better, rather than worse. that kind of product placement lets you take that leap with us so much more easily. because
oh my god, what if this thing is real? what if this person does exist? what happens if i go to that restaurant? what happens if i buy that product? what if... what if... what if ...
so that' s the kind of model i' m most excited about as far as creating products in the future that do not support other people' s products .
you know, a similar thing is actually happening in video games right now, in terms of in - game advertising. and there' s controversy over it there as well, and questions of when does it disrupt the' bubble' and when is it actually lending itself to it .
don' t get me wrong. even in arg' s there' s a fine line. i know first hand that you can absolutely butcher this concept if you insert things in the wrong way. if it feels contrived, if it feels forced, you' ve accomplished the exact opposite. your realism is just shattered and that bubble bursts. but i think arg' s are in this very unique position. the reins are a lot looser, and we can experiment a lot more than movies, tv, or even video games have traditionally been able to do .
is your first attempt at commercializing. it' s a young adult novel, aimed at a young female audience. why did you go for that audience first, before any others ?
our staff writer, sean stewart, who' s an award - winning science - fiction writer, it was an area he was really fascinated with. he has two young teenage daughters, and he really wanted to try to create a product for them. it is a huge market; it' s really just enormous. and in some senses, we kinda looked at it as
if we can do this, we can probably do anything .
( laughs) so, we knew that sean could write a good story, we knew that there was an audience out there for it, and we knew that, if done right, the concept of a book that is fun to read beginning to end - - but also lets you poke at it, and it' ll poke back a little bit - - we knew that a teenage female audience would be really attracted to that, or so we hypothesized. and the book just made it to the new york times best seller lists .
thank you. so, so far that experiment has gone very well and validated a lot of our assumptions .
well, first of all, oh my god is that flattering! if people see a product that starts to go poorly, and that is the reason they think it can' t be us, we' re in a really good place with the community. and it' s something we' ve worked really hard to establish, that our products are of a really high quality, and to see that the audience is responding to that, and building their assumptions off of that... wow, it doesn' t get better than that .
did a lot of things right, and a lot of things wrong. like any other arg, there is no rulebook, and there is no reference to look at and say
let' s imitate that, because that' s the right way to do it .
they were trying a whole bunch of new stuff. we watched them very closely, and learned a lot from their mistakes. but ultimately, the thing that we are allowed to do that microsoft is not - - and perhaps one of the reasons that you haven' t seen
our colony 2
- - is because microsoft can afford to take a risk like that about
. and if it doesn' t work, they have responsibilities to the stockholders, they have responsibilities to the internal teams, and they have resources that have to be allocated in a certain way, because they' re big and they' re huge and they' ve been around for a while .
was to try and address that exact concern. we made it a much more casual game, a much more accessible game, because we knew we weren' t going to be able to hit the exact same audience. because they
burnt out, and they' ve seen one before, and they' ve already formed opinions on microsoft' s ability to launch an arg for this product, and why work uphill? why try to change their opinion on that? let' s aim for a new audience, one that hasn' t been tapped yet. so we made it much more casual. we made it more fun, much more tongue in cheek, and ultimately i think that' s the reason it succeeded - - because it didn' t try to fix a mistake that was made earlier .
it kinda leads to a much larger problem with arg' s. because they' re so new, and because it' s a genre that doesn' t have a rulebook yet, there' s a lot of people trying them, and messing up. each time that happens, it makes it that much harder for a good one to get out there and do well. because a lot of times those bad ones are people' s first exposure to them, and if your first experience is a bad one, you' re almost entirely unlikely to try again. that is the thing i' m scared of the most - - when a product comes out that makes some very large mistakes, in a very public arena .
, and you see that in edoc, which embraces that new thinking, and so it was very important for me to show up to a conference like this, to kind of establish that. to say
you know what ,
law enforcement may have a tough time cracking your phone with a usb device .
tapping into the same creative well as' minecraft' could be the key to long - term success .
it' s available now, along with watchos, tvos and homepod versions .
the company will launch an ipo on a' recognized' us stock exchange .
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you can play the stop the international game by visiting a web site. players have to put a stop to the international bank’s corruption by searching through the site for clues. the clues lead to other web sites and can lead to caches of $ 100 bills in real - world locations around the u. s. and europe. players can also win a car similar to one that watts drives in the movie. the game runs through feb. 13, when the movie opens .
if they take off, alternate - reality games can be quite cost effective, since the fans themselves spread the word and do so for free. but it remains to be seen if fans will stick with them now that their is wearing off. mind candy created a clever alternate - reality game, perplex city, which sent users on a real - world treasure hut. but the british company decided that, while the game created a lot of buzz, so few people actually participated in solving the puzzles that it wasn’t a good business if you were trying to sell an actual game or related trading cards .
“if this qualifies as an art form, we are just scratching the surface of it, ” bonds said .
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the initial clue was so subtle that for nearly two days nobody noticed it .
uced into the us water supply. ostensibly, parepin was an antidote to bioterror agent
onse :
i & apos; m drinking the water. so should you .
onlin
what this had to do with nine inch nails. a setup for the next album? some kind of interactive game? or what ?
, which she had bought at one of the lisbon shows, when she noticed that the tour dates included several boldface digits. fans quickly interpreted this as a los angeles telephone number. people who called it heard a recording of a newscaster announc
ng. then, a woman named ana reported finding a usb flash drive in a bathroom stall at the hall where the band had been playing. on the drive was
previously unreleased song, which she promptly uploaded. the metadata tag on the song contained a clue that led to a
, a grimly futuristic suite evoking an america beset by terrorism, ravaged by climate change, and ruled by a christian military dictatorship .
but i had a problem ,
he recalls, l
loor deck of the house he & apos; s remodeling in beverly hills: how to provide context for the songs. in the & apos; 60s, concept albums came with extens
this article has been reproduced in a new format and may be missing content or contain faulty links. contact wiredlabs @ urltoken to report an issue .
s unfold in fragments, in all sorts of media, from web sites to phone calls to live events, and the audience pieces together the story from shards of information. the task is too complicated for any one person, but the web enables a collective intelligence to emerge to assemble the pieces, solve the mysteries, and in the
t; now dozens of such games are launched every year, many of them attracting millions of followers on every continent .
. one player even braved a florida hurricane to take a call in a burger king parking lot .
similar games have been used to launch scores of products in the years since. gmd studios, a florida outfit, staged a fake auto theft to begin a game for audi that drew more than 500, 000 players. a london studio called hi - res used television ads and specially made chocolate bars, among other things, in a still - talked - about game touting jj abrams & apos ;
when done well, args can be extraordinarily effective ,
says ty montague, creative director of the j. walter thompson ad agency. that & apos; s because the games offer marketers a solution to a growing problem: how to reach people who are so media - satura
rwise you & apos; d go crazy ,
weisman says. that & apos; s why he opted for a
subdural
approach: instead of shouting the message, hide it .
i figured that if the audience discovered something, they would share it ,
he explains ,
because we all need something to talk about .
that led to a maze of bizarre web sites about robot rights and a phone number that, when called, played a message from a woman whose husband had just died in a suspicious boating accident. within 24 hours, thousands of people were trying to figure out what had happened .
it totally put my brain on fire. what we & apos; re doing now is a giant extrapolation of sitting in the kitchen playing d & d with friends. it & apos; s just that now our kitchen table holds 3 million people
— the number that ultimately engaged with the
is game the beast, because originally it had 666 pieces of content. but
s the players burned through those and clamored for more, the name took on a different meaning. he had created a mon
the internet was beginning to engage and entertain customers — whether with free singles on itunes or an arg that could run for months — before asking them to part with their money .
all marketing ,
weisman says ,
is headed in that direction .
.
we had no idea of the scope. that was the most fun — not knowing what would come next .
debates raged as to whether it had anything to do with philip k. di
ialed this number (and some 1. 7 million did) heard a horrific recording from a mysterious organizat
nd killed her friend and that the cops had locked everybody inside and she was going to die .
rives were typical of what makes a good arg work. they were hard to spot and even harder to decipher, but because the narrative was being pieced together online, you didn & apos; t have to be a propellerhead to follow it .
our assumption ,
says sean stewart, the game & apos; s head writer ,
was never that there & apos; s a continent of
42 entertainment is an american company based in burbank which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games ( args ) . the company was founded in 2003 as an independently owned , creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo entertainment . the company started with a nine-person management team and was originally based in emeryville , california . it produces alternate reality games , including campaigns for xbox and ps3 titles , the movie the dark knight , and the nine inch nails year zero album . 
42 entertainment is an american company based in burbank which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games (args). the company was founded in 2003 as an independently owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo entertainment. the company started with a nine-person management team and was originally based in emeryville, california. it produces alternate reality games, including campaigns for xbox and ps3 titles, the movie the dark knight, and the nine inch nails year zero album.
42 entertainment is an american company based in burbank which specializes in creating and producing alternate reality games (args). the company was founded in 2003 as an independently owned, creative content and interactive agency under the name 4orty 2wo entertainment. the company started with a nine-person management team and was originally based in emeryville, california. it produces alternate reality games, including campaigns for xbox and ps3 titles, the movie the dark knight, and the nine inch nails year zero album.