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Elan Lee's Alternate Reality
EL: Our role for marketing is not a traditional one. Typically marketing tries to get more new eyeballs on a product. What we try to do is get a product into venues they wouldn’t normally have access to. For example, we did I Love Bees for Halo 2. Halo 2 was going to be huge, no doubt about it. But suddenly you saw crazy, fanatic people answer telephones in bee costumes in the middle of a hurricane; you saw that on CNN and you saw that in the New York Times. You saw stories about insane Halo fans interacting and creating entertainment in their lives in a way that no one had ever seen before. And while Halo 2 would have been huge anyway, there’s no way it would have gotten into venues like that. GS: But did that big-name coverage mention “crazy Halo fans” or “crazy I Love Bees fans”? EL: Most of the articles I saw mentioned Halo 2, because it these bizarre statements that reporters have to make in order to cover the story. So in that sense we’re very valuable to our clients. But, while we’re getting very good at marketing, we’re really interested in branching off. And that’s what EDOC Laundry is--saying, hey, we don’t need to market anything but our own stuff. We just released a book, called Cathy’s Book. What if we did this for ourselves? Can we actually make games and stories that don’t promote anything else? Next year you’ll see a few more experiments leading toward that eventual goal of creating a new genre of entertainment that doesn’t have to support another genre.
GS: But EDOC Laundry is still very much based on selling products. EL: You’ve got to make money somehow. It seems that your options are sell a product, or charge a subscription–Majestic was a previous example of that, and it didn’t work so well. We are looking at more creative subscription models–or in-game advertising. No one’s really tried that last one yet, so that’s one thing you will definitely see some experimentation with in the future. GS: How would in-game advertising work? Don’t you run an ethical risk in a game that’s already so subliminal? EL: For our games, where people strive to make them real, the more things you can do to make them feel good about believing that they might be real, the better. We’re in this unique position where things like product placement are actually a good thing, because the more real-world examples that can fit into a game, the more comfortable users feel saying, I’m willing to take the leap of faith that maybe there is this alien invasion, because it’s grounded. We’re going to try to take as full advantage of that as possible. GS: Back to EDOC Laundry for a sec, could you talk a bit about the structure of the game itself? Yesterday you explained how players find codes in the clothes they buy and then plug the codes into your site to see clips of a murder mystery, but how are players interactively involved? EL: The current model of EDOC Laundry is exactly as you described. It’s a very passive experience. Initially, we just wanted to run the experiment: Can we create an internet portion of a clothing company? So we made this sort of hunt-and-click experience. You go out, you buy a shirt, you get the code, you punch it into the website, and you get rewarded immediately. The theory was, if you watch enough of the movies you’ll figure out “who done it.” In the next season, coming out this week with our new range of winter clothing, you’ll see a much more interactive process. You’re actively participating in the story, actively solving puzzles, with still the fun and rewarding goal of trying to figure out a murder mystery. |
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